From the bloody theatricals in the Middle East, the world has shifted its attention to the corridors of Europe where violent protests have been taking place in Ukraine with the aim being to depose of its reigning premier Viktor Yanukovych and join the European Union. The protests have further antagonized and polarized the warring factions and hopes of a peaceful compromise is turning bleaker with every bullet fired. All that exists now is a tense stalemate that either fizzle out into normalcy or culminate into a civil war.
Since the country’s inception after the First World War, it has constantly grappled with the notion of its national identity. Repelling waves of Russian domination, cultural and otherwise had taken center stage in the 20th century. Ukraine suffered under Stalin’s wrath; given their allegiances in the First World War. The region was one of the worst affected during the famines caused by the forced collectivization of agriculture in the 30’s. At the cusp of the decade Ukraine found a new tormentor who went by the name of ‘Adolf Hitler’, a man who vehemently stated that the appropriation of Ukraine crucial to his panoptic plans. Another World War and six million lives later, the country received no respite; now reluctantly relinquished to Stalin by the Western leaders in the Yalta conference. Ukraine was now under Communist rule until the termination of the Cold War. Now it functions as a democracy with occasional bouts of nostalgia harking back to its recent tyrannical past.
These protests or the ‘Euromaidan’ movement (as it is now termed as) is a culmination of the pent-up frustration of the Ukrainian public, who have been subjected to years of corruption and governmental inefficiency. The return of Yanukovych to public office isn’t encouraging, so is his flirtations with Russia. The movement is largely fuelled by the youth (who else?) who affiliate themselves to the EU, a stance which starkly contrasts that of their parents and grandparents who prefer their Eastern big brother. These difference are also noticeable as one traverses through the longitudes with the western half supporting entry to the EU while their eastern countrymen standing in solidarity with the elder generations of the country. This vital observation can cleave the state in two, however improbable that might be. The ‘Euromaidan’ has the potential to heal the European Union’s collective fragility, an opportunity which in theory, the powers to be should grasp with both hands. Will they do that? Let’s wait and see.
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