The country that drew lots between the EU and Russia turned irreversibly towards the west through many twists and turns. Ukraine’s change over the past 10 years has been enormous.
In November On the 21st of 2013, STT published a little news with the title “Ukraine suspended the preparation of the EU treaty.” At the time, few could guess what kind of wheels of history the Ukrainian government’s decision set in motion.
The past ten years have changed Ukraine as a country in a fundamental way.
Senior researcher Ryhor Nizhnikau
“The change is massive. During the last 10 years, we have seen a huge change in the opinions of citizens, but also in the opinions of the elite,” says a senior researcher at the Foreign Policy Institute. Ryhor Nizhnikau.
Proceedings started to collapse in November 2013, when the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych the government suspended the preparations for the cooperation agreement with the EU due to pressure from Russia.
The decision enraged many ordinary Ukrainians, who took to the streets. Yanukovych tried to suppress the demonstrations by force, but that only made them grow. Eventually, the protests, known as Euromaidan, expanded into an anti-government movement and led in February 2014 to a revolution and Yanukovych’s flight from the country.
Russia responded by occupying the Crimean peninsula and starting a war in eastern Ukraine. Finally, in February 2022, Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine.
A year 2013 Ukraine was in many ways a very different country than it is now. According to Nizhnikau, it was still a distinctly former Soviet republic back then.
“The country was completely divided socially, both in terms of foreign policy and in terms of what the country should become.”
For years, Ukraine had drawn lots in its orientation between East and West. A large part of the people thought that Ukraine could have good relations with both.
Nizhnikau raises, for example, the current president for the change in Ukraine to Volodymyr Zelensky sketches from 2013, in which he makes fun of the nationalism of Western Ukrainians as a comedian.
“He strongly pushed the idea that Ukraine must be a friend of both Russia and the West. In this respect, he represented the point of view of the average Ukrainian.”
Few Ukrainians saw Russia, considered a brotherly nation, as a military threat. Since then, the attitude towards Russia has completely changed, and the country’s security machinery has been purged of Russian agents with a heavy hand.
“Now Ukrainians see the Russian elite and society as a complete enemy. There is no possibility that this country could turn back in the direction of Russia,” Nizhnikau sees.
Nizhny Novgorod think that the EU treated Ukraine in the wrong way in the early 2010s. Ukraine was not seen as a future EU member, and the country received more attention from Brussels mainly due to the activism of its citizens.
“Ukrainian civil society pushed both the country’s own elite and the EU to focus more on the rapprochement between Ukraine and the EU.”
What if Yanukovych hadn’t made his fateful decision in November 2013, or hadn’t reacted to the protests so harshly? Nizhnikau believes that citizens’ demands for a closer relationship with the EU would have intensified anyway.
If Yanukovych had gotten his way, Ukraine would have spent the billions of aid it received from Russia and returned to the starting point.
“Without Euromaidan and without the war, Ukraine would be turning towards Europe anyway, but much more slowly.”
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