But these incidents do not add up to a nation that has
descended into chaos or civil war.
To the contrary, the radical aggressors of
EuroMaidan respect public order for the most part and calibrate their actions to keep the focus on their mission: ousting President Viktor
Yanukovych’s regime.
That means that while the activists are happy to seize
a police bus on Hrushevskoho Street and set it on fire, they leave the fancy
boutique storefronts alone on the same street because they have no quibble with the shopkeepers. (One, however, has to overlook the grafitti spraypainted on the sides of many buildings.)
So protesters
can theoretically throw stones and Molotov cocktails at police while dodging the officers’ rubber
bullets and flash grenades, then the two sides can take a break and go to the SushiYa restaurant on the same street.
In two months of confrontation, there has notably not been a
single shopfront window broken in Kyiv’s downtown, contrary to civil unrest in other
European nations such as Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and France. In those
nations, protesters showed no mercy for shop windows. Granted, Ukraine’s protesters aren’t
shy about taking apart fences or ripping up paving stones, but those acts of
vandalism also serve the larger plan.
EuroMaidan protesters are, in
fact, focused and goal-oriented. They know very well what they stand for
and whom they oppose. The protesters have been criticized for having low
discipline, but the assessment seems to be off the mark.
Much of the EuroMaidan anger
is directed against the endemic corruption of the nation’s top officials. At
least one aspect of the ongoing protests seemed to underscore the point, to the
embarrassment of the authorities.
The water cannons used by
police on Jan. 19 were not operating correctly (in fact, their use at all in
subfreezing temperatures against people is considered to be an international human rights violation).
It turns out that these machines
were purchased by the government for emergency situations during the Euro 2012 football
championship co-hosted by Ukraine and Poland. Numerous journalistic exposes
reported on the corruption schemes used for government purchases of goods and
services for Euro 2012. Much of what the government bought then was of poor
quality despite being bought at extremely high prices.
So if the poor quality of
the water cannons prohibited police from stopping protesters effectively, it
would seem that the snake has bitten its own tail.
Kyiv
Post associate business editor Ivan Verstyuk can be reached at [email protected]
