Sunday 24 November 2013

It started quietly and sombrely on Sunday, on a misty morning in a small park opposite one of Ukraine’s oldest universities.

Earlier this week the country’s opposition, media and civil-society activists had come together to call for mass protest against a government decision to abandon a historic trade and political integration agreement with the European Union. The agreement would have seen the former Soviet state move a step closer to the West and away from overbearing Russian influence.

And Ukraine responded. By noon the surrounding streets were clogged.

Clearly, a bigger venue was required. Tens of thousands of demonstrators headed for Maidan, Kiev’s main square and the scene of Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution. Nine years on, almost to the day, the square retains its association with dissent.

They marched slowly but with increasing confidence as their numbers swelled. A huge Ukrainian flag, followed by a huge EU flag, swept past a statue of Vladimir Lenin and onto Khreschatyk, Kiev’s eight-lane central thoroughfare. Protesters clad in blue and yellow, the colour of both EU and Ukraine flags, sang as they moved down the street. Despite the rain, all were clearly elated at the scale of the demonstration.

A group of young students from a Kiev university sang traditional Ukrainian songs as they formed a marching column. Three of them held aloft a banner which read, in English, ‘No Putin No Cry’.

They, like many other Ukrainians, believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking to reconstitute the Russian-led Soviet Union by creating a rival trading bloc and compelling former Soviet countries to join.

It was, according to Ukrainian leaders, Russian pressure that forced Kiev to abandon a deal with the EU that had been years in the making. The decision was made shortly after President Yanukovych travelled to Moscow for secret talks earlier this month.

Threats of a Russia-Ukraine trade war and hiked gas prices have been cited as the main reasons for cancelling negotiations by a government ranked as one of the 30 most corrupt in the world.

But for ordinary Ukrainians, association with Europe means much more than potential profits or losses.

FULL STORY: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-divided-as-t...