Seven years ago, in preparation of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement that was to be signed on November 28-29, 2013, at the Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius, Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers adopted a resolution on November 21 that halted those preparations, sparking large protests in Ukraine on November 24 that became known as the Revolution of Dignity. It was the largest protest action in Ukraine since the 2004 Orange Revolution.
The Cabinet’s decision attracted between 100,000 and 200,000 protesters to Kyiv’s Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosty) to demand the resolution’s cancellation and the Association Agreement’s signing by President Viktor Yanukovych.
The resolution was not submitted to the European Union as the Ukrainian government’s official position, and lacked any international standing. It also left the door open for Mr. Yanukovych, as president, to make a final decision that would be binding for Ukraine as a foreign policy decision. Mr. Yanukovych was in Vienna for a working visit when the Cabinet decision was made, and he stated that Ukraine would continue “on the path of Euro-integration.”
However, opposition leaders called for the resignation of Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and his Cabinet, and Mr. Yanukovych’s impeachment if he failed to sign the Association Agreement in Vilnius. The opposition also called for the EU leadership to impose sanctions on the members of the Yanukovych administration if he failed to sign the agreement.
Among the major hurdles to the signing of the EU Association Agreement was the EU calling for the release of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko from prison. However, signing the agreement was not directly tied to her release, and was based more on the EU decision that her imprisonment was based on selective justice.
European leaders said there was a possibility of signing the agreement with an assurance of her release by Mr. Yanukovych. In that scenario, the 28 EU member-states would evaluate Mr. Yanukovych’s commitment to that promise in the agreement’s ratification process (requiring all 28 EU member Parliaments to approve). However, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden had already stated that they would not support anything short of Ms. Tymoshenko’s full freedom at the moment of the agreement’s signing.
In the diaspora, Ukrainians, Georgians and other nationalities joined together in solidarity to show support for those who were protesting in Ukraine. Events were organized in Washington, San Francisco, New York, Cleveland, Toronto, Vancouver, British Columbia, Stockholm, Sweden and Rome.
The Ukrainian Weekly’s editorial underscored the “dangerous political game” that Ukraine’s Cabinet was playing. The editorial added: “Ukraine’s leaders have turned the negotiations into a bazaar-style bargaining in a desperate search for cash that will keep their floundering government afloat until the March 2015 presidential election. Winning those elections will enable this band of crooks and swindlers to continue robbing the country for another five years… Mr. Azarov himself admitted that [President Vladimir] Putin demanded delaying the Association Agreement until a trilateral commission was formed, while Ukraine’s representative to the Eurasian Economic Commission, Viktor Suslov, acknowledged the November 21 resolution was planned with the Russians.”
Other reactions to the decision were included in that issue of The Weekly from the Ukrainian Catholic University, the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organizations, and the Ukrainian World Congress. Additional reactions were included from the U.S. Department of State, Canada’s foreign affairs minister, and the EU high representative for foreign affairs.
Similarly, the decision on October 27 of this year by Ukraine’s Constitutional Court to scrap anti-corruption efforts has also been identified by observers as a manifestation of Russian influence on the court. Those decisions by the court are seen as having an immediate and profound impact on foreign investment in Ukraine, judiciary independence and reforms, IMF loan guarantees, EU integration and an equal application of the rule of law.
Source: “Cabinet rejects EU association pact, igniting largest protest since 2004,” by Zenon Zawada, The Ukrainian Weekly, December 1, 2013.