INTRODUCTION
This is about the pivotal & revealing 3 months starting Nov 21, 2013, that changed history.
Much of it is well-documented in the film “Winter On Fire”, on Netflix. The film corresponds to what I was reading since I first saw a news report that day in Le Monde.
Also on YouTube: “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RibAQHeDia8”
Note: I lived 17 years in the European Union (EU, originally called the Common Market). I know it well. It’s doing quite nicely, thank you. The countries are democratic, and respect the rule of law. You have to, or you can’t join.
November 21, 2013
President Yanukovich won election in 2010, promising that Ukraine would ask to join the EU, which Ukrainians understand as promoting rule of law and democracy. Ukrainians could easily see how their neighbor, Poland, was prospering from this, and how corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs were keeping their own country down.
On November 21, 2013, his prime minister announced that the EU deal was off, that instead Ukraine would be seeking a closer alliance with fascist Putler & his gangsters.
EUROMAIDAN (Nov, 2013 — Feb, 2014)
The reaction was immediate; people began streaming into Maidan (Independence Square) in protest. I saw news reports that day and started following it intently in English, French and German. The issue was NOT NATO. It was about joining the EU.
“The protesters opposed what they saw as widespread government corruption, the influence of oligarchs, abuse of power, and violation of human rights in Ukraine. Transparency International named Yanukovych as the top example of corruption in the world.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan
Tens of thousands of people occupied the square for three cold months. The riot police, Berkhut, came and beat unarmed citizens up, badly. This only fueled the outrage and revolution.
Even when diplomats from the EU & US were in Kyiv to negotiate, the evening of December 11, many riot police showed up, ready to crack heads. Word went out; all the cathedral bells rang. Tens of thousands came, fully aware of the serious danger they were facing. They were afraid, but they came. It was the riot police who backed down. A foreign spy agency can’t buy that kind of courage. It comes from the heart.
The Ukrainians self-organized: barricades, clinic, information center, food, warm clothes. There was no single leader. They didn’t want any. Major decisions were made by a show of hands, aka real democracy. This was a revolution of solidarity coming from the people, to join the EU.
REVOLUTION OF DIGNITY (February, 2014)
The last half hour of “Winter on Fire” showed the last battle of Maidan where police & snipers were picking off citizens, one by one. In an astonishing show of courage and solidarity, few left the square. More came. They refused to surrender. Tens of thousands of them. When the police shot a citizen, Ukrainians went out, picked him up and brought him back to the clinic — while risking their own lives. Solidarity. They did not back down. As explained in the film, they fully understood that they would not have another chance for freedom in decades. Now was the moment. This was it. Win, or have no future.
They finally took a hand vote and issued a demand, Yanukovich must go. He fled to Russia early the next morning.
Parliament scheduled new elections for that spring.
PUTLER INVADES (2014)
Having a slavic country next door enjoying the fruits of the EU threatens Putler’s own rule-by-mafia. So he cooked up some weak excuses, and grabbed mineral-rich DonBas in eastern Ukraine. He also stole Crimea. Having a brand new government and barely an army, Ukraine was not, then, in any position to fight back.
It is difficult for those who have not spent decades under rule from Moscow to understand, but it’s a mafia state that imagines it is superior. Ukrainians use the word genocide: wiping out their country, people, culture, language, everything. This is not an exaggeration. It’s their lived reality.
When the Soviet Union finally collapsed, December 25, 1991, most of its republics declared independence.
When Moscow tried to create a Eurasian Economic Union/Community in the 90s, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Georgia, and Ukraine made it absolutely clear they want nothing to do with gangsters. Nothing.
PUTLER INVADES (2022)
Putler invaded Ukraine yet again, February 24, 2022. If he had seen “Winter On Fire”, he might have understood what he was up against. Real courage. Real solidarity. He was planning on taking Kyiv in 3 days. It was a spectacular blunder that unified Ukraine, all of NATO, and most of the free world, including once neutral Sweden and Finland. Every time he bombs cities, schools, hospitals, and cathedrals, massacres towns, and blows up a dam, it just fuels the outrage. Negotiation with a psychopathic terrorist is futile.
GEORGIA
Georgia deserves special mention. It’s pro-Kremlin government was ostensibly working towards joining the EU. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Georgian_protests
On March 7, 2023, the parliament adopted a proposed “Law On Transparency of Foreign Influence”, a copy of a law in Russia. It meant that the EU could not send observers as part of a formal process to join the EU. Georgia would not join an economic & democratic union.
As in Kyiv, immediately, massive protests appeared around the parliament building.
Having learned from Maidan, on March 10, 2023, Georgia’s Parliament relented and let both anti-EU bills die.
OTHER TOPICS
One could write many pages about the history, like here: https://igorsushko.substack.com/p/russias-recent-history-of-serial (also, look up Holomodor). One could add the different cultures, languages, ethnicities, etc of the region; all of which Moscow has constantly lied about.
3 notes: (1) Ukraine posed NO IMMINENT THREAT to Moscow. Hungary would have vetoed Ukraine’s entry into NATO, before tsar Putler’s unprovoked invasion that is. (2) The Ukrainian Rada (parliament) with 435 members has just 1 member of a fascist/nazi party. One. (3) When the US went to the aid of Kuwait after Iraq’s invasion in 1990, there was NO defense treaty. One does not need a defense treaty to help another country.
Moscow always leaves out the most important question — what do the people of Ukraine want? That’s clear: to be free, to join the EU.
PROMISE MADE
Why should democracies should support Ukraine? Please remember that in the 90s, UKRAINE GAVE UP ITS NUKES, in exchange for a solemn PROMISE that the US, UK & Russia would provide security assurances to Ukraine. Right now, it is Ukraine that is defending us.
Slava Ukraini
