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Just over 25 years after the independence of
the Soviet Union, Ukraine seems to have a steadily
looking west, with a distant hope of membership in both
the EU and NATO. But the road to it has been paved with
political and economic crises, and two popular uprisings
were needed to establish the course.
After independence in 1991, Ukrainian domestic
politics was characterized by a growing economic crisis
as a result of the transition from planning economy to
market economy and struggles around economic policy. In
the fall of 1992, Leonid Kuchma, former head of a large
arms factory, was named prime minister. Kuchma presented
a reform program that included privatizations and major
cuts in government spending. Reform policy faced
obstacles in Parliament, which was dominated by members
of the Communist era. In the summer of 1993, two million
mining and industrial workers went on strike in protest
of the declining standard of living. Kuchma resigned and
parliamentary elections were held in March 1994.
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ABBREVIATIONFINDER:
List of most commonly used acronyms containing Ukraine. Also includes historical, economical and political aspects of the country.
The Ukrainian Communist Party, which was again
allowed, became the largest party in the new parliament.
The nationalists declined strongly. When the
presidential elections were held in July of the same
year, Kuchma in the second round defeated incumbent
President Leonid Kravtjuk (see Older History), with 52
percent of the vote.
Conflicts over economic policy characterized the
entire 1990s. The power measurement between the
government, the president and the parliament was
somewhat mitigated in 1996, when a new constitution was
adopted. However, this did not dampen the power struggle
between the economically and politically dominant groups
in society held together by old friendships.
 The power struggle between the "clans" came in the
open after a failed assassination attempt in July 1996
at the newly appointed Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko.
In the spring of 1997, serious allegations of corruption
were leveled against Lazarenko, which led to President
Kuchma dismissing him. Lazarenko left the country and
sought asylum in the United States, where he was later
sentenced to jail for extortion, fraud and money
laundering. According to the UN, he stole more than the
equivalent of SEK 1.7 billion from the Treasury during
his year as head of government.
Kuchma reign
After a troubled and violent election campaign in
1998, the Communist Party became the largest party. But
no clear majority bloc could be discerned in the new
parliament.
In the 1999 presidential election, Kuchma in the
second round defeated the Communist Party leader. He
unexpectedly appointed Prime Minister Liberal former
governor Viktor Yushchenko, who initiated economic
reforms. Kuchma himself was largely seen as an
authoritarian ruler in the Soviet spirit.
At the end of 2000, a political crisis erupted over
the disappearance of the regime-critical journalist
Georgij Gongadze. Band recordings where Kuchma is said
to discuss how to get rid of Gongadze triggered major
demonstrations demanding the president's departure.
Kuchma claimed that the tapes were forged.
Yushchenko's reform-oriented government was toppled
in the spring of 2001 in a distrustful vote by an unholy
alliance of communists and oligarchs, that is,
politically influential financiers.
The 2002 parliamentary elections were marked by
irregularities. The election was criticized both by
representatives of the Ukrainian opposition and by
foreign election observers. Yushchenko's newly formed
Liberal electoral union Our Ukraine was the largest, but
President Kuchma could count on the support of
parliament by a large number of members elected as
independent candidates. Viktor Yanukovych was appointed
new Prime Minister. He was formerly governor of Donetsk,
a Russian-speaking region in the east, which gained new
political weight.
The campaign for the presidential election in autumn
2004 was stormy. The main candidates were the former
Prime Minister Yushchenko and the sitting, Yanukovych.
Yushchenko had strong support in the country's western
and northern parts as well as in the big cities.
Yanukovych was supported mainly by the Russian-speaking
population in eastern and southern Ukraine, as well as
by many oligarchs. Russian President Vladimir Putin also
openly supported Yanukovych.
The Orange Revolution
In the second, crucial election round in November,
polling stations pointed to Yushchenko as the victor,
but the electoral commission gave the victory to
Yanukovych. Election observers claimed that there had
been widespread electoral fraud, and widespread protests
erupted.
Demonstrations in Kiev soon swelled to mass rallies,
where hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians showed their
support for Yushchenko with orange symbols. They set up
tent camps and occupied several government buildings.
The indignation grew to storm strength when a group of
doctors in Vienna announced that the mysterious disease
with severe rashes that had affected Yushchenko during
the election movement was caused by poisoning with
dioxin.
The pressure finally became so strong that the
country's highest court decided that the second round of
elections had to be changed. The new election was held
on the second day of Christmas and, according to the
election observers, it was much more honorable than the
previous one. According to the official election result,
Yushchenko now won with 52 percent of the vote against
44 percent for Yanukovych. The goal of what came to be
called the Orange Revolution had been achieved without
any blood being spilled.
Yushchenko took office in January 2005 and appointed
new Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who was his ally
during the revolution. The hopes were high that the
country would now move towards strengthened democracy
and political stability.
Tymoshenko kicked
But the agreement was short-lived. Soon, serious
contradictions within the new management were revealed
and allegations of corruption hailed. Already after
eight months, Yushchenko dismissed Prime Minister
Tymoshenko.
The Western-friendly government's relations with
Russia also deteriorated. Negotiations on gas prices for
2006 became difficult and by New Year Russia shut down
gas supplies (see Foreign Policy and Defense). The
dispute was resolved in collaboration with Brussels, a
sign of Ukraine's strategic position. But when an
agreement on higher prices was concluded, the parliament
in Ukraine revolted and voted down the government.
However, President Yushchenko refused to let the
government go.
When parliamentary elections were held in March 2006,
they won the "orange" party alliances - Julia
Tymoshenko's bloc and President Yushchenko's Alliance
Ukraine. However, the largest individual party became
the Yanukovych Region Party. Oppositions between the
leading parties delayed the formation of government
until August. Then Viktor Yanukovych - the loser of the
presidential election - took over as prime minister,
with the support of the communists and a social
democratic party that had previously belonged to the
orange side.
Several government crises followed, leading to new
elections in September 2007. The region's party was
again the largest by just over 34 percent, but Julia
Tymoshenko's block increased the most, reaching almost
31 percent. After difficult negotiations, a new
government was formed in December: now Tymoshenko
returned as prime minister with the support of his own
bloc and Yushchenko's Our Ukraine. However, the
coalition came to be characterized by internal
conflicts.
Yanukovych becomes president
The war between Russia and Georgia in August 2008
shared the Ukrainian leadership. Yushchenko became party
to Georgia, while Tymoshenko allied with the
Russian-friendly Ukrainian opposition. Yushchenko's
party left the government, and in October the president
dissolved parliament and announced new elections. But
the global financial crisis that just broke out put
everything to an end.
In Ukraine, industrial production began to collapse
in the fall, the budget situation became critical and
the government was forced to seek crisis loans from the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) (see Finance). The new
election was canceled, after Tymoshenko succeeded in
getting a new government coalition with Yushchenko
supporters and representatives of a smaller electoral
union called the Lytvyn Bloc.
By the new year 2009, Russian Gazprom shut down gas
to Ukraine again, but a new price agreement was soon in
place. However, the economy was in free fall. President
Yushchenko accused the government of trying to hide the
seriousness of the economic situation, after Tymoshenko
slowed budgetary tightening. The government's internal
conflicts aggravated the crisis. During the spring,
demonstrations were held demanding the resignation of
Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, and in the autumn a bitter
campaign for the January 2010 presidential election
began.
Before the election, Yushchenko's popularity was at
the bottom because of the government's inability to cope
with the economic crisis. The electoral movement
developed into a duel between Yanukovych and Tymoshenko.
Yushchenko was knocked out in the first round when he
received just over 5 percent of the vote. In the second
round, Yanukovych won by 49 percent against 45.5 percent
for Tymoshenko. Despite Tymoshenko's assertion that
electoral fraud has occurred, Western observers found
that Yanukovych's relatively clear victory was correct
and that the election was largely open and fair.
After Yanukovych was installed as president in
February, he made a statement of no confidence in the
government and Tymoshenko was forced to resign. A new
government took office, led by one of Yanukovych's
confidants, former Finance Minister Mykola Azarov. His
government relied on Yanukovych's own Regions Party,
Ukraine's Communist Party and the Lytvyn Bloc, as well
as some opposition members who switched sides. Of 29
government ministers, more than a third came from the
Russian-speaking Donetsk region, the president's home
region, and none were women.
Democracy is weakening
For starters, the shift in power was welcomed both by
the home opinion and the outside world, which hoped for
a democratic development. But quite soon an increasingly
authoritarian regime emerged. Local elections held in
October 2010 were not considered acceptable democratic
level.
Media freedom was limited and censorship was
reintroduced. According to critics, Yanukovych also
exerted pressure on the Constitutional Court, which in
October 2010 annulled a constitutional change that came
into force a few years earlier and limited the
president's power. Before the 2012 parliamentary
elections, new electoral rules were introduced. Party
blocs were forbidden to stand and a system was
reintroduced where half of the MPs would be elected by
majority vote in one-man constituencies. The changes in
the electoral law were assumed to favor the incumbent
government, as the opposition was largely organized in
electoral unions, and many of those expected to be
elected in one-man constituencies were wealthy
businessmen favored by contacts with the government, or
government officials who were easily presumed to be
pressured - or mutilated. - to join the majority in
Parliament.
Most attention, however, aroused the legal processes
that started Tymoshenko and a number of other
high-ranking representatives of the former government.
Many accused Yanukovych's regime of engaging in
political repression, exercised by the courts.
Tymoshenko was prosecuted for abusing her office and
for causing the state financial damage through a gas
agreement with Russia in 2009. Prosecutions for this
political decision could be brought under the support of
a law from the Soviet era. In October 2011, Tymoshenko
was sentenced to seven years in prison and several other
charges followed. Tymoshenko claimed that Yanukovych was
behind the charges in order to silence his most
difficult political rival. In 2012, three ministers in
the Tymoshenko government were sentenced to imprisonment
for between three and five years for various forms of
abuse of power.
With Tymoshenko in jail, her party of the Fatherland
failed to threaten power holders when parliamentary
elections were held in October 2012. The result meant a
new victory for the Yanukovych Region Party and its
support parties. But the election was severely
criticized both by the opposition and the West for abuse
of state resources in the electoral movement, unbalanced
media coverage, poor arrangements and pure cheating.
The opposition continued to protest against the
government for alleged voting and to allow
parliamentarians to vote in place of absent members in
violation of current rules. The protest was aimed at the
fact that many of the elected people were businessmen
who, by and large, never appeared in Parliament, but
only assumed their will to guard their interests.
Fighting broke out in Parliament on several occasions.
From the beginning of February 2013, opposition members
for a time implemented a physical blockade of
parliament, which crippled all legislative work.
Tug of war between the EU and Russia
In the fall of 2013, Ukraine ended up in a tug of war
between the EU and Russia, both of which wanted to bring
the country closer. The EU, among other things, demanded
reform of the judiciary but most concretely that Yulia
Tymoshenko would be released, while Russia threatened
with severe consequences for the countries' trade
exchange if Ukraine were to decide on a closer
relationship with the EU. President Yanukovych and the
Party of Regions voted down all proposals for the
release of Tymoshenko, which seemed to close Ukraine's
potential for closer cooperation with the EU for several
years to come.
The EU still suggested that a cooperation agreement
could be possible, but the development took a new turn
when the government announced in November that it had
canceled preparations that would lead to the signing of
an association agreement. The message triggered
widespread protests among the population and led to the
largest demonstrations since the orange revolution
around the turn of the year 2004-2005. The protests had
its center on the Independence Square in Kiev, called
Majdan (the "square").
The leading opposition parties supported the
protesters' demand for the departure of the president
and the government. The government critics portrayed the
conflict as a choice between a democratic and free
Ukraine in cooperation with Europe or a corrupt sound
state to Russia (see also Conflicts-Ukraine).
A new generation of so-and-so-often anonymous
politicians began to emerge. They had had enough of the
corruption that characterized Yanukovych and his regime,
closely allied with the country's wealthiest business
leaders, and which was pushing the state against
economic bankruptcy. The protests began in the capital
Kiev but spread to other cities in western Ukraine and
became increasingly well organized. Among the protesters
were also representatives of right-wing nationalist
groups, which was used by the Yanukovych and the Russian
government to claim that the uprising was led by
fascists. In Moscow, opposition to Yanukovych was
compared with the Ukrainian nationalists who during
World War II collaborated with Nazi Germany against the
Soviet army. The protests and unrest continued into the
new year and led to the government's departure at the
end of January 2014.
The appointment of a new government was delayed and
Ukraine ended up in a political stalemate where no
solution to the crisis was in sight. In mid-February,
the conflict intensified dramatically as bloody clashes
erupted between riot police and protesters. Over a few
days, over 100 people were killed and several hundred
injured. Ukraine appeared to be on the brink of civil
war, but after long negotiations with opposition leaders
and EU diplomats, Yanukovych succumbed. He agreed to
form a unity government, rewrite the constitution and
advance presidential and parliamentary elections.
When the activists behind the demonstrations rejected
the agreement and demanded that Yanukovych resign
immediately, the president fled. Several members of his
party switched sides and Parliament voted to dismiss
him. During a few dramatic days, the entire power elite
was replaced, a unity government nominated by protest
activists and with some demonstration leaders on
ministerial posts, and Yanukovych was called for mass
murder. He was also charged with embezzling tens of
billions of dollars. His son Oleksander had during his
father's time as president built up one of the country's
largest corporate empires with operations in the gas,
coal, real estate and banking sectors. The Yanukovych
family is suspected to have been involved in most major
business deals made in Ukraine.
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