Friday 22 November marks 20 years since protesters first took to the streets of Ukraine to protest the results of the country’s presidential election. The Russia-friendly candidate Viktor Yanukovych had won against the provost Viktor Yushchenko, but large sections of the population refused to accept it. There were allegations that Yanukovych had cheated his way to victory. The opposition got a new round of elections in place, and challenger Viktor Yushchenko won.
The protests that arose after the controversial election became known as the Orange Revolution.
The revolution created a greater divide between Ukraine and Russia, and many believe it contributed to creating the conflict that later led to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Arve Hansen, advisor at the Norwegian Helsinki Committee and expert on Ukraine, believes this is a false narrative which Russia has promoted – with success.
– Russia has long tried to portray Ukrainian society as divided between East and West. That the country is divided. They have also succeeded in influencing the West to believe this, says Hansen to Dagsavisen.
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– It was not about ideology, but economics
Hansen has lived in Eastern Europe for ten years, including Ukraine, and has written several books about Ukraine and the country’s relationship with Russia. The Orange Revolution is often highlighted as an important political crossroads for the country.
– It was in the time before the presidential election in 2004 that Russia really began to promote this idea that Ukraine is a two-part country. That is not true at all, says the researcher.
Instead, he believes the revolution was about domestic political problems that Ukrainians were concerned with, such as abuse of power, corruption and the economy.
– This was not primarily about ideology, but economics. The main reason why the people protested was abuse of power and widespread corruption. Yushchenko had managed to make many enemies, including the oligarchs in Ukraine. They controlled large parts of the media, which wrote a lot of negative things about him. Because he talked about NATO membership, he also got Russia against him, says Hansen.
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Facts about Ukraine after the Orange Revolution
- Accusations of electoral fraud after Viktor Yanukovych was declared the winner of the presidential election in November 2004 triggered the so-called Orange Revolution, in which tens of thousands of orange-clad people demonstrated against a pro-Russian government dominated by old communists.
- The protests led to Ukraine’s Supreme Court annulling the presidential election. The by-election in January 2005 was won by the opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko.
- In the presidential election in February 2010, Yanukovych won a narrow victory over Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who was one of the leaders of the Orange Revolution.
- After the election, Yanukovych saw to it that Tymoshenko was put on trial for abuse of power. In 2011, she was sentenced to seven years in prison.
- She remained in prison until Euromaidan, also known as the Revolution of Dignity, took place in Ukraine and Yanukovych was deposed by the National Assembly.
Source: NTB
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Believes Russia will retain influence in the country
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine and Russia had close ties for a long time. However, it quickly became clear that there was a clear divide between east and west in Ukraine. The eastern areas, such as the Donbas, leaned more towards Russia, was the perception outside. Language was often used as an argument to show this distinction.
In 2012, the news agency wrote Reuters about a new law that gave Russian and other minority languages ​​the status of regional languages. It allowed the use of minority languages ​​in courts, schools and other public institutions in areas of Ukraine where the national minorities made up more than 10 percent of the population, which was often the case in eastern Ukraine.
But Hansen believes language is not a good indicator of which direction one leans politically.
– To equate language or ethnicity with political affiliation is wrong. It has never been true, neither in 2004 nor 2014. Choice of language may matter more now, since the full-scale invasion in 2022, but not historically, he says.
The adviser, who has a doctorate in area studies from the University of Tromsø and, among other things, has researched the Russian-Ukrainian war, believes it is crucial for Russia to retain influence in the country. Ukraine is very, very important to Russia.
– This is primarily symbolic. Ukraine was an important part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. It is from Ukraine that Russia has its state religion and historical origins. Therefore, it is important to keep Ukraine under Moscow’s control. It has been a political goal for a long time, especially under Putin, says Hansen.
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New revolution, new accusations
On Thursday, there was another marking. It was then eleven years since Euromaidan, also known as the Dignity Revolution, started in Ukraine. The protests, which took place in Kyiv’s Independence Square, arose as a result of the Ukrainian government’s decision to postpone the signing of an association agreement with the EU. Instead, the government, led by President Viktor Yanukovych, would forge closer ties with Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).
The protests, which eventually developed into a violent conflict, ended with Yanukovych being ousted as president. Russian President Vladimir Putin responded by occupying and later annexing the Crimean peninsula.
Hansen also believes that this revolution has been misunderstood by many in the West.
– In the beginning, Euromaidan was a relatively small protest action against the breach of the association agreement with the EU. It was only when those who protested were met with violence that there was a large action that led to Yanukovych having to flee the country. Few were characterized by the East versus West game, although in the Russian and Norwegian media it has been portrayed as just that, he says.
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Hansen himself was present in Kyiv during the entire Revolution of Dignity, and wrote about the protest movement in a doctoral thesis at the University of Tromsø.
In Russia, the Revolution of Dignity is seen as an illegal coup supported by the West against a democratically elected president. In the West it is seen as a revolution against a corrupt and authoritarian government controlled by Russia.
– It was certainly a revolution, and not a coup d’état. A revolution is driven from below. Even the proven opposition politicians were unable to control or steer the protests in one direction. This was the people who ruled, Hansen asserts.
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If they could do it in Kyiv, they could do it in Russia too.
— Tor Bukkvoll, chief researcher at FFI
Frightened Russia
Tor Bukkvoll, chief researcher at the Norwegian Defense Research Institute (FFI), completely agrees with Hansen’s view that both revolutions were about internal political unrest, not a tug-of-war between Russia and the West.
– It is important that the Orange Revolution is not presented as a geopolitical struggle. That’s not what started it, it was the election rigging. During the Orange Revolution and Euromaidan, there were different triggering factors, but both were ultimately more about corruption and abuse of power, he tells Dagsavisen.
He thinks Russia actually believed what they said, that is, that the West influenced both revolutions. He does not think that is true, but at the same time he points out that Euromaidan had a clearer foreign policy profile than the Orange Revolution.
– It was probably uncomfortable for them that the Ukrainian population could do something like this, so close to Russia. If they could do it in Kyiv, they could do it in Russia too, says Bukkvoll, who has done a lot of research on Ukraine and Russia.
Regardless of what triggered it and what it was really about, Bukkvoll believes that the Orange Revolution affected relations with Ukraine and Russia to a very large extent.
– The revolution was an important part of Putin’s turning away from the West. In the early 2000s, right after Putin became president, he had an idea for a strategic cooperation with the West. He had probably not thought of it as a community of values, but as two major actors in the world with some common, strategic interests, particularly in the fight against radical Islam. I think Putin thought that such a partnership meant that no one should interfere in the internal affairs of the other party. Then the Orange Revolution happened, and for him Ukraine was part of his internal affairs, even though it was an independent state, says the researcher.
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