The day before Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and the leaders of France, Germany and Russia will meet to negotiate peace under the Normandy Four format, several thousand people attended a rally at central Independence Square, or Maidan, to demand adherence to what they call “Red Lines” for the Dec. 9 summit.
The rally was organized by a wide swath of political parties including the European Solidarity party of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party, Voice party founded by the rock star Svyatoslav Vakarchuk and the far-right Svoboda party.
Former President Petro Poroshenko spoke from the stage, hitting on the sentiment that nothing good can come out of efforts to reach peace through negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Don’t trust Putin. Never. At all. Putin manipulates with everything – content, facts, numbers, maps, emotions. He hates Ukraine and Ukrainians and does not see our place on the political map of Europe,” said Poroshenko.
The “Red Lines,” which were presented by three parliamentary factions on Dec. 3, include five demands: no federalization, no compromises on Crimea, no concessions on Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic course, no elections in the occupied territories of Donbas without Russian troop withdrawals and Ukrainian control of the state border and no termination of international lawsuits against Russia.
Underlying the crowd’s specific demands, activists echoed Poroshenko’s doubt about Zelensky’s ability to hold his own against the leaders of the larger powers.
“I don’t see a strong position from (Volodymyr) Zelensky or partners who will be in the negotiations. (Emmanuel) Macron sympathizes with (Vladimir) Putin. Angela Merkel is also ready to negotiate with the Russian president,” Oleksiy Komarovsky, an activist from Brovary in Kyiv Oblast told the Kyiv Post.
“I can’t understand whether Zelensky is collaborator and traitor, or just an amateur, a person who has never been in politics and wants with some charisma to take on Putin. It’s just unrealistic,” added Komarovsky.
Protesters hold sings during the ‘Red Lines for Zelensky’ rally on Dec.8, 2019. (Kostyantyn Chernichkin)
At 9 p.m., the rally will move to Bankova Street near the President’s office, where activists plan to remain until the summit concludes, establishing a tent camp to stay through the night.
“I have great concern that what will happen in Paris may be the same as it once was in Munich,” said Lesia Vovchyk-Blakytna, a native of Kyiv, referring to the 1938 handover of portions of Czechoslovakia to Germany that preceded World War II.
“Given the fateful challenges facing Ukraine today before the Normandy meeting, authorities should be reminded of the ‘red lines,’ the demands of the Ukrainian people, which no one has the right to ignore,”former Rada chairman Andriy Parubiy wrote on his Facebook page on Dec. 5.
