Returning to Maidan

In May 2014, I returned to Ukraine for the first time since the Maidan revolution of the previous winter, when a wave of protests culminated in the flight of Viktor Yanukovych, the country’s president, to Russia. The protests were triggered by Yanukovych’s last-minute decision, under pressure from Russian president Vladimir Putin, not to sign an Association Agreement with the EU; they became a mass movement after police assaulted a group of peaceful demonstrators. The Maidan protests—named for their location, Kiev’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti, Independence Square—were about much more than an EU agreement. Thousands of Ukrainians, ranging from idealistic students to patriotic old ladies, from the liberal intelligentsia to hardcore nationalists, held the square in hope of a new Ukraine, independent of Russian influence, pervasive corruption, and a government ruled by oligarchic clans.