By Vestnik Kavkaza
On November 13th the president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, signed an act which requires that the 21st of November, the day of the Euromaidan’s start, would be marked annually as the Day of Dignity and Freedom. Ahead of the date, Vladimir Zharikhin, the deputy director of the Institute of the CIS Countries, spoke about the goals achieved by the Maidan.
“The goals were to some extent achievable, and sometimes even good. From my point of view, there were three voiced goals. The first one was the elimination of all obstacles on the path of the European integration of Ukraine. The second goal was to overthrow the oligarchs from power. The third one was to overthrow the representatives of the East from power, to replace them with the people who were in opposition at that moment,” Zharikhin says.
According to him, in the majority of cases the results of the Maidan were opposite to those desired: “Regarding the process of European integration, on the one hand, the process was speeded up from the propaganda point of view; but if we look attentively at the real situation with Ukraine’s European integration, there is no progress. Moreover, in general we can see a throwback.
As for the struggle against the oligarchs, a shift from the rule of the oligarchs to the rule of the people, we can see that the goal wasn’t reached at all, looking at the current Ukrainian authorities. In the previous Ukraine the oligarchs ruled indirectly, through their representatives, while the president of the country wasn’t an oligarch; but today all top positions are occupied by real oligarchs. They captured power in the center and in the regions.
Finally, the absence of representatives of the East of Ukraine in power, who “pulled Ukraine in the past, to Russia, to Asia,” they succeeded in this. But the question of price is open. Of course nobody will admit their mistakes and they will continue to say that the crisis has been organized by Russia in Ukraine.”
According to Zharikhin, the situation in the East of Ukraine is a logical result of the activities of the current authorities: “The military conflict in the east of Ukraine was started by representatives of the revolutionary forces, as the overthrow of representatives of the southeast of Ukraine from the legal political sphere led to the logical result of such strict measures. They were replaced by radical political forces that were illegal in Ukraine, and now they confront Kiev. Previously, the Party of Regions created an illusion that it represented the voters of the southeast and their interests in the general political space of Ukraine. When the Party of Regions was destroyed, suppressed, eliminated, it brought a one-off victory, but in general it was a strategic defeat for the current Ukrainian authorities. I think the results of the year are not positive from the point of view of reaching the Maidan’s goals.”
