Those who try to sit on two chairs get Maidan

Yesterday, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko signed the order on dismissal of the judge of the Goloseyev District Court of Kiev, Larisa Kalinichenko, for “lawless decisions” on cases of Maidan activists. ITAR-TASS reported that the administration of Poroshenko stressed that during the events of winter 2014 in Ukraine, the judge, who decided to sentence activists of the Maidan to imprisonment for 60 days and impose administrative sanctions on activists of the Euromaidan “for crudely violating demands of the relevant legislation, demonstrating a subjective and biased approach during consideration of the cases of the mentioned persons.” On January 30th Poroshenko signed the order on dismissal of three judges for ‘lawless decisions’ regarding participants in the mass protests in Ukraine in 2014.

Rostislav Ishchenko, a political scientist, puts responsibility for the Maidan on Washington and Moscow: “The Americans should be blamed because they were working too much in Ukraine; and the Russians should be blamed because their work in Ukraine was insufficient.”

At the same time, Ishchenko wonders: “Did Ukraine have state power or not? Had the state authorities set some goals? Or were they simply waiting to see with whom from the outside it would work?”

The political scientist recalls that the first Maidans were prepared during the presidency of Leonid Kuchma: “When in the early 2000s radicals attacked the administration of the president, they were beaten with truncheons, 15 people were arrested and imprisoned. And everything had been quiet, peaceful, sedate and dignified for three years. During the last Maidan, once it started to break up, immediately a universal cry started, Western European ambassadors were appearing, American troops landed, demanding not to disperse the Maidan.”

Ishchenko is sure that the Ukrainian government since the days of Leonid Kuchma tried to sit on two chairs: “It was hinted to Kuchma that the geopolitical situation had changed, the multi-vector policy could be buried; it was necessary to choose either the East or the West. Yanukovych, because of his short-sighted mind, was told this several times in a clear text. It was said not only at negotiations. Russian and American politicians were interviewed, huge articles were published in newspapers, television regularly reported: it was necessary to make a choice. But Yanukovych was going to sit on two chairs and couldn’t use force against the Maidan.”

The expert remembered how supporters of European integration got weapons two years ago: “They began to attack police stations in regions, took guns from there and brought them to the Maidan. Then they began to get weapons from military units.”

According to Ishchenko, the problem of the Ukrainian government was not only that there were traitors inside: “What kind of a ruling political party was it, if 90% of the deputies after the coup met in the parliament and voted for the legalization of this revolution? So they were all traitors. The authorities formed the political elite in such a way, because they tried to keep a route both to the East and to the West.”