A symbol of resistance

Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution was not a ‘coup’ — no matter how many times Putin insists otherwise

Vladimir Putin and his supporters have been using the idea of revolution in Ukraine as a bugaboo ever since reports of widespread election fraud prompted the Orange Revolution in 2004. Then, ten years ago, the Maidan Revolution spurred the Russian president not only to launch a military campaign against Ukraine but also to crack down on civil liberties within Russia itself. What led to Ukraine’s 2013–2014 uprising? And why do Russian officials and propagandists constantly refer to it as a “coup”? To answer these questions and more, Meduza’s Signal newsletter turned to Konstantin Skorkin, a journalist and researcher of Ukrainian politics.

Ten years ago, late on the evening of November 21, 2013, students, activists, and journalists began gathering in the center of Kyiv. They were protesting the Ukrainian government’s decision to suspend preparations for the signing of an Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union; then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych soon voiced his support for the suspension as well. This was the beginning of the Maidan Revolution — or the Revolution of Dignity, as it is known in Ukraine.

In the months that followed, 104 protesters and 17 law enforcement officers were killed in violent standoffs, Yanukovych fled to Russia, and Ukraine held snap elections, bringing to power leaders who supported closer relations with the E.U. Several weeks after the change in leadership, Russia annexed Crimea and then invaded Ukraine’s Donbas region.

What led to the Maidan Revolution?

First and foremost, the events of the Maidan Revolution were a direct continuation of the 2004 Orange Revolution. The earlier revolution occurred immediately after the announcement of the results of the run-off vote in the country’s presidential elections, which had Viktor Yanukovych winning by a slim margin. Voters and international observers reported witnessing numerous falsifications, prompting supporters of another candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, to take to the streets.

Ultimately, the Ukrainian Supreme Court called for a third round of voting, which ended in Yushchenko’s victory. In a compromise with the old elites, the new president agreed to constitutional reforms that strengthened the role of the country’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada. The Yanukovych-led Party of Regions achieved a partial comeback in the subsequent parliamentary elections in 2006, gaining a parliamentary majority, which made Yanukovych prime minister. Four years later, he won the country’s next presidential election.

According to Ukrainian political scientist Olexiy Haran, even though the compromise between Yushchenko and Yanukovych helped Ukraine avoid a violent confrontation (with the exception of several incidents in the Donbas), it also led to the deferment of long-overdue political and economic reforms, including a judicial reform and the opening of the country’s land market.

Moreover, the Orange Revolution left Ukrainian society divided on several issues, including whether Ukraine should pursue membership in the E.U. and NATO, or whether it should move closer to Russia and the Eurasian Customs Union.

The split had a geographic basis as well: Ukraine’s southern and eastern regions (which largely supported Yanukovych in 2004) leaned towards Moscow, while the western and central regions (which voted for Yushchenko in 2004) were more oriented towards Europe and the West in general.

This polarization would have been avoidable had politicians not exploited the topic for their own benefit. For example, politicians from the Party of Regions publicly disparaged residents of Western Ukraine, going as far as to propose disposing of Galicia, while their opponents proposed allowing Crimea and the Donbas to secede.

An additional — and decisive — factor was the Kremlin, which used these domestic disputes to weaken Ukraine and strengthen its control over the country. For example, Russian political strategists actively worked with the Party of Regions in Crimea and the Donbas to deepen divisions between these regions and the rest of Ukraine.

Another important factor was the nature of the Yanukovych regime. After winning the 2010 election, Yanukovych generously awarded the “Donetsk clan” that had brought him to power. Donbas natives were hired to the government and security agencies in large numbers, while corrupt pro-government businessmen aggressively absorbed their competitors. The level of state corruption began to rise, and civil liberties started to decline.

Yanukovych himself was mired in corrupt schemes — you can see here, for example, how he outfitted the Mezhyhirya Residence, where he lived during his presidency after a businessman close to him privatized it in 2007. His eldest son, Oleksandr Yanukovych, became one of the wealthiest people in the country just a few years after his father was elected. All of this turned public opinion against Yanukovych — both among ordinary citizens and among the elite.

Yanukovych also pursued a policy of closer ties with Russia. The Party of Regions and Russia’s ruling party, United Russia, signed a cooperation agreement in 2010. It was also under Yanukovych that Ukraine ratified the 2010 Kharkiv Pact, which extended the Russian Black Sea Fleet's presence in Sevastopol until at least 2042. In 2012, the government developed a law that allowed equal use of a second language alongside Ukrainian in regions where more than 10 percent of the population spoke a minority language. The Russian language thus gained official status in half of Ukraine’s regions, which essentially undermined the significance of Ukrainian as the state language.

This rapprochement with Russia upset patriotic Ukrainians, who responded by holding frequent protests. It was during these demonstrations that a circle of activists began to form. These activists would later become the leaders of the civil resistance on Maidan Square in 2014.

What happened during the Maidan Revolution?

The 2004 Orange Revolution can be viewed as a “color revolution” similar to the largely non-violent mass protests that led to changes in power in Serbia in 2000, Georgia in 2003, and Kyrgyzstan in 2005. But what happened in Ukraine in 2014 was fundamentally different due to the scale of the changes in the country, as well as the protesters’ use of violent methods to achieve their goals.

From the perspective of the majority of Ukrainian society, the 2014 Maidan Revolution was a national liberation movement and a “Revolution of Dignity” aimed at overthrowing the corrupt, pro-Russian regime of Viktor Yanukovych, as well as a movement in support of integration with Europe.

At the same time, proponents of a classical interpretation of the concept of “revolution” note that the Maidan did not bring about a complete change of elites or of the country’s socioeconomic structure: oligarchs maintained their positions, and some of the Yanukovych-era elites and pro-Russian politicians continued to wield significant influence in Ukraine — all the way up until Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022. For example, Yuriy Boyko, who served as deputy prime minister under Yanukovych in 2012–2014, and Viktor Medvedchuk, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, led the second largest faction in the Verkhovna Rada (though their party had only 43 seats compared to the ruling party’s 254).

Nonetheless, the changes that occurred after the victory of the Maidan uprising can reasonably be called revolutionary. Among other things, the country embarked on the path of European integration, implemented major anti-corruption reforms (such as establishing a specialized anti-corruption court, bureau, and prosecutor’s office), and in 2022, it became a candidate for E.U. membership.

In other words, the Maidan can be viewed as a specifically Ukrainian phenomenon — a symbol of resistance to authoritarianism. Some historians have argued that the mechanisms that allowed both the Orange Revolution and the Maidan Revolution to succeed in Ukraine have their roots in the democratic traditions of the Zaporozhian Sich, a semi-autonomous community of Cossacks in the 16th–18th centuries that elected and ousted hetmans in public assemblies.

Why does Russia refer to the Maidan Revolution as a ‘coup’?

According to the standard definition, a coup d’état is an illegal forcible seizure of state power by military forces or other security forces in which the head of state and his inner circle are killed or arrested.

It’s certainly true that the confrontation in Kyiv involved the use of force on both sides. The uprising also forced the ouster of Yanukovych, who fled to Russia (Ukraine later convicted him in absentia of treason) and lost his position. In the months that followed, however, Ukrainian constitutional lawyers concluded that the former president’s actions threatened the country’s sovereignty and that the Verkhovna Rada’s decision to remove him from power was the only feasible solution, if a contentious one. The appointment of Verkhovna Rada Chairman Oleksandr Turchynov as acting president was also found to be consistent with the Constitution.

However, this didn’t prevent Putin from declaring immediately after the Maidan Revolution that a “coup” had taken place. Before that, he referred to the protests in Kyiv as a “pogrom.”

The Kremlin was likely inspired to characterize the events in Ukraine in this way by the image of a “military junta” that appeared frequently in Soviet propaganda. In the 1970s, militaristic far-right groups overthrew socialist regimes in Chile and El Salvador, causing the Soviet Union to lose influence in Central and South America. Seeing right-wing (and far-right) protesters on Maidan Square in 2014 and not believing people could really self-organize and oppose the government, Putin may have convinced himself that what was occurring was a coup d’etat. Indeed, the Russian president referred to Turchynov’s government as a “junta,” despite the fact that there were no representatives of the military among the country’s high-ranking officials.

Labeling the Maidan as a coup gave Putin a free hand. In early March 2014, he refused to adhere to the conditions of the Budapest Memorandum, arguing that Russia “had not signed any binding documents” with Ukraine’s new government. By casting doubt on Ukraine’s sovereignty in this way, Putin paved the way for his annexation of its territories and, later, his full-scale invasion by minimizing the threat of widespread domestic discontent and the perception among Russians that something unjust or illegal was happening.

Even after Russia recognized the results of Ukraine’s snap elections in May 2014, the Kremlin’s “state coup” rhetoric did not subside.

Will there be another Maidan?

The image of the Maidan is so salient in Ukrainian society and enjoys so much respect among the majority of the population that many politicians have tried to co-opt the term in their public messaging. In 2016, for example, parliamentary deputy Yulia Tymoshenko attempted to organize a “tariff Maidan” against a planned increase in the cost of communal services. A year later, supporters of Mikheil Saakashvili began referring to protests against the slow pace of reforms in Ukraine as “MikhoMaidan.” None of these efforts to capitalize on the Maidan’s popularity gained widespread support, however, which suggests that without genuine popular discontent, “organizing” a Maidan Revolution is not possible.

Volodymyr Zelensky’s victory in Ukraine’s 2019 presidential election and the success of his party in that year’s parliamentary elections were referred to by some political analysts as an “electoral Maidan.” Zelensky, who ran as a protest candidate, received 73 percent of votes in the second round of voting, while 80 percent of the Verkhovna Rada deputies elected in 2019 were political newcomers.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, however, 66 percent of Ukrainians were confident that a third revolution was unlikely.

And although Ukrainian society is now entirely focused on resisting Russia’s military aggression, leaving domestic political disputes on the back burner, the majority of Ukrainians believe it’s necessary to criticize the government even during wartime. When the war is over, Ukrainians may once again start posing questions to the authorities that have accumulated over the years — and if those questions are left unanswered, they may return to Kyiv’s central square.