Maidan - five years: what Ukrainians wanted then and what they think now

How it all started

On November 21, 2013, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, chaired by Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov, unanimously voted to suspend the preparation of an agreement on the Association of Ukraine with the EU and at the same time establish spoiled economic relations with Russia and other CIS countries. Read - move again towards the Customs Union. Until the next Summit of Eastern Partnership in Vilnius, where President Viktor Yanukovych was also called, there was a week remained ...

The government explained the back of the West by the back of the West with his back to Europe: they did not guarantee that budget holes would shut up and cover the risks in the national economy, which will inevitably arise from the loss of the Russian market. In addition, the European Union still demanded the implementation of “homework”, in particular, reforms in the field of electoral legislation and the prosecutor's office, and also the release of the political prisoner Yulia Tymoshenko, the main ex-competitive Yanukovych in the elections. The last point turned out to be the most sensitive and offensive to the guarantor. Kyiv, feeling a welcome partner, intended to bluff and bargain with both sides, with Europe and Russia. Especially since

Sociologists recorded the dynamics of mood growth in society in favor of the Association with the EU: support exceeded 58%. And without Ukraine, the Customs Union lost meaning, not to mention the Eurasian.

The opposition appointed to the mayor’s rally in support of European integration on Sunday, November 24, on an area with a symbolic name European. Although people began to gather on the day the government issued its verdict. At the traditional "point" for revolutions - on the Maidan. There were a police cordons around. Inside - the first, rather, symbolic tents. Students of the capital's universities-the Kiev-Mogilyansk Academy, the National University named after Shevchenko-and those who went to the capital from other cities, became the basis of the movement, which was called "Euromaidan". "Yanukovych, subscribe!" - the youth chanted. Politicians were not allowed to the microphone, party flags were not given to lift. However, the opposition rally gathered 100 thousand participants. Similar mass actions swept throughout the country, including Donetsk and Lugansk.

The calls to Yanukovych did not help ...

On the evening of November 29, the guys sang the anthem of Ukraine for the last time and first allowed the deputies from the National Democratic Camp-they also flew to Vilnius, to the summit-to tell from the scene what to wait now. “Doors to Europe remain open, but we were made to understand that the current president-robber will not enter there!” - explained politicians. Students adopted the resolution: a public protest to complete, turn into agitators and guides of the idea “Ukraine is Europe!” To meet the next presidential campaign - 2015 - to be fully armed.

True, part of the configured more radically refused to endure another two years. She promised not to get out of the place until they accept the law on impeachment in the Rada and applied it to Yanukovych, and then hold the early elections of the president and parliament. From the opposition, she demanded not to compete with each other, but to name uniform candidates for key posts in the state.

The choice of students was as follows:

• Vitaly Klitschko is the president (now the mayor of Kyiv),

• Arseniy Yatsenyuk-Prime Minister (was the prime minister from 2014 to 2016, heads the Parliamentary Party "Popular Front"),

• Oleg Tyagnibok - Speaker (Leader of Freedom, ran for the presidency in the early elections of 2014 and lost, and the party did not fall into the Rada).

It is noteworthy that the Euro-Maidanists in their layouts did not recall either Yulia Tymoshenko, languishing in Kharkov in the hospital ward with the bars on the windows, nor about Petro Poroshenko, an non-confractional mere nomine, although his “channel” became an information sponsor, in fact the only “media-headed” protest.

Before the dawn of November 30, the fighters of the Golden Eagle special forces with special rigidity, batons and tear gas, completed the order: they dared from the area of ​​those who still sat at the Independence Monument. Many were detained to beat even more in the police departments before falling out the deadline for the article for resistance. Some wounded managed to hide in the Mikhailovsky gold monastery. The monks closed the gate, the "golden eagle" did not dare to burst. Now the former commander of the Ukrainian Berkut, Colonel Sergei Kusyuk, lives in Moscow, is used for its intended purpose - he commands riot police, disperses protests, and the devil himself is not his brother.

In Kyiv, it was simply not allowed to wash off blood from granite. In a matter of hours, instead of a student, with songs and river, protest, the city center was filled with a crowd of angry adults, ready not only for resistance, but also for the offensive, and for retribution. The scene and management of the process went to opposition politicians who did not expect such a gift of fate. From this moment, it makes sense to consider the “euro” as a prefix to the Maidan by a completed stage.

The new phase, called the revolution of dignity, noted a new task - to remove from the power of Yanukovych, the "bull", which stole Europe.

In my opinion, the popular blogger Roman Schraik described the motives and prospects of such a step, his post on Facebook dates from December 1, 2013, more frank and more frank.

“... I am absolutely sure that Yanukovych does not have the opportunity to remain president. If the capital was not in Kyiv, maybe. But she is in Kyiv. And he will have to go to work in a tank, like an invader in a temporarily captured territory. I am absolutely sure that the restart of power - early elections of the president and parliament - are beneficial to everyone. Both the opposition and the oligarchs on which the Party of Regions rest. I am absolutely sure that there is a danger of the collapse of the country. And this is beneficial only to the leader of one “friendly” state, who loves to enter troops into neighboring and not very countries. Total: if Mr. Akhmetov and other pillars of the Party of Regions do not want to become pilots of a kind of Transnistria, it is time for them to make a decision and publicly support the restart of power. ”

The fact that the war for the independence of Ukraine is inevitable, and the account will open very soon, on Kyiv streets, on November 21, 2013 was not believed at all ...

Details

The day of dignity and freedom is celebrated in Ukraine at the state level for the fifth time.

In the Rada, the exhibition "Maidan: Details" - photographs, artifacts, history of participants in the events is deployed. The deputies began a meeting with a minute of silence near a metronome in memory of the dead.

An hour later, three representatives of the Petro Poroshenko bloc (in the world-the police general general, the vice-president of the capital's boxing Federation and the ex-head of the large trading structure) registered the draft law on amendments to the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure of Ukraine regarding the responsibility for slander. The document, in particular, provided for a prison conclusion for up to five years for media representatives who unveiled “slanderous” materials. In 2012, with a similar initiative-to criminalize the article for slander, that is, to shut up their mouths to reporters “digging” the president and power as a whole, ”the regionals spoke.

But the reaction within the country and in the West forced Yanukovych to call the bill a mistake and promise to observe European, whether they are wrong, standards.

Criticism - tolerate, with corruption and an oligarchy - to fight, and the like.

Early in the morning, President Petro Poroshenko with his wife, as well as with Prime Minister Vladimir Groysman and speaker Andrei Parubia knelt before the cross, a temporary monument on the segment of the Institutskaya Street, which was called the Hero Heroes of Heaven.

Representatives of the new democratic opposition, including potential presidential candidates Anatoly Gritsenko and Viktor Chumak, also with flowers and lamps, came not to cross the leadership. Priests served a memorial prayer.

In the Ukrainian house, a “path of dignity” began-an art project with the participation of the state academic pop-symphonic orchestra, the famous Academic Choir Chapel “Duma” and the soloists of the national opera. An international exhibition has opened in the Art Arsenal, where, with the help of performance, installations, painting, video and photo documents, the revolution as a public phenomenon was analyzed. In short, the list of events dedicated to the date could take half of this note in the newspaper.

Kievans, among whom were the relatives of the dead and the participants of the Maidan, did not have the schedule "from and to". The whole cold day covered the places of street executions with chrysanthemums, roses, carnations ... Security measures corresponded to the status of a warring country: the center of the capital was patrolled by police and National Guards, all with automatic weapons.

“... In the fall, not only leaves from trees, but also dictators fall,” warned Julia Tymoshenko on Facebook, full of hints and allusions. -In Ukraine on the Maidan, heads of lucaps are demolished. Sometimes - literally, sometimes politically. " The ratings indicate its leadership in the struggle for the post of head of the state, at least now, a month and a half before the official announcement of the beginning of the election campaign.

The headquarters burned during the Maidan and a symbol of protest, the house of trade unions, was finally discovered after restoration. Now, among other things, the building has a museum of the revolution of dignity. Other, namely, the restaurant of fast food to FFC, caused indignation:

“Here people were burning, and now fried wings in batter?! Who belongs to the franchise? "

Closer to the night, a group of national radicals in balaclavas painted the windows and the walls of the “chicken coop” with a cylinder, brought tires ... The police intervened, there were no hacking and gas. Soon the detained nationalists were released.

"Thank you for not forgetting!"

The General Prosecutor's Office held a briefing. The management of special investigations has reported how the things related to the most terrible pages of the Maidan - executions are being promoted. On the eve of the fifth anniversary, investigative experiments in the Institute area suddenly resumed. From the segment of the street, almost everything related to the spontaneous perpetuating of the memory of the dead, which gave the grounds to reporters to suggest: “Danish” activity - just an attempt to catch up with the time lost. For example, to find bullets stuck in the trunks of trees, each of which remembers the last minutes of the life of the defenders of the barricades ...

The head of the department, Sergei Gorbatyuk, rejected suspicion - the place was long studied by specialists. But since the construction of the memorial and access will no longer be starting here, they decided to check every centimeter again. He also brought statistics: the country is investigating 4,700 episodes of crimes committed against protest participants. 442 persons were reported to suspicion, in relation to 279, indictment was sent to the courts. Further, the numbers became more modest. 52 people are found guilty in court, 13 are in custody, in places of imprisonment - 9.

Gorbatyuk is convinced:

- Real prison terms receive mainly “titles”, according to individual episodes. Cases against law enforcement officers are very tightened. Cause? The resistance of the judges and the resistance of the leaders of the law enforcement agencies. Although crimes during the Maidan were committed primarily by law enforcement officers. The system was so sick that it was more important for a policeman to fulfill any, even a criminal order than to observe the law.

However, the report of the head of the Office rather confirmed that the system has not recovered so far.

The investigation of crimes against the Maidan did not become a priority for the state.

Some of the security forces who first beat people, and then, possibly firing at them, were re -certified and continue to serve in the new police, in the National Guard and even to the SBU,

Others - in command positions. Only the other day was detained and taken into custody of the ex-sniper from the internal troops. Previously, the fighter went into the case of the murder of an activist as a witness. And on whose hands the blood of Sergei Nigoyan, Mikhail Zhizhevsky and Roman Senik, the first dead heroes of resistance to the Yanukovych regime, could not be established.

Senior Prosecutor Alexei Donskoy, a state prosecutor in the correspondence court of a fugitive president of Ukraine (interviewed with Donskoy on this occasion, published on May 17, 2017), complained to the “procedural diversions” from the lawyer corps and reformed the CPC. Donskoy participates in a number of other resonant processes on Maidan affairs:

- Why are there so few sentences for crimes? Because the code sees only the rights of the accused! If the company has a request for justice, changes are needed (in the document). Otherwise, a well -deserved sentence will be passed as an exception.

By the way, the optimization and liberalization of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which, to the horror of prosecutors, achieved the Rada, the essence of the “homework” from European mentors of Ukraine ...

The situation, according to Donskoy, is saved only by the presence of journalists on the processes of journalists.

- This involuntarily affects the level of preparation of the parties. Therefore, at least part of the court decisions - decent quality. Thank you for not forgetting!

Five years turned out to be a sufficient term so that among the participants and supporters of the Maidan (there is no talk of enemy and critics!) To ask each other the question: “What fought for?” So far, those who are responsible-“For Independence from Russia!”, Still more.

Kyiv