Buffalo Expatriate

Maidan Nezalezhnosti is known in the West mostly as the scene of the Orange Revolution, Ukraine’s most significant event in it’s independent democratic history. Well, a little over three years later, President Bush has decided to come to Ukraine just days before an important NATO summit in Bucharest where Ukraine’s future in the organization faces its next test. However, instead of the square being filled with a young force of pro-democracy demonstrators, today, part of the square was occupied by members of the Communist and Socialist parties as well as people who had come strictly because they oppose NATO. And let’s not forget all the people in between who really couldn’t care either way, but were offered 10 hryvnias to stand in the square and protest for an hour.

President Bush says he supports a clear path to Ukraine’s eventual membership into NATO. Poland backs Ukraine’s bid as well, however players like Germany and France think Ukraine is not ready to join the alliance particularly without full public support for the move. Some say all of this boils down to Russian pressure and influence, however it does seem that people are still wary about what will be Ukraine’s obligations under NATO membership.

President Bush has cooled down the rhetoric during this trip about NATO members fulfilling obligations to the pact and providing more troops. In fact, he stated he will not be putting pressure on Germany to add more troops to the mission in Afghanistan. This comes a little over a month after Secretary Gates warned that NATO allies were not putting in enough effort or troops.

Three of Ukraine’s leaders- President Yushchenko, Prime Minister Tymoshenko, and Parliament Chairman Arseny Yatsenyuk- issued a joint statement in January with their intentions to seek a Membership Action Plan, which would rapidly speed up the process of membership beyond anything happening now. During two separate meetings I attended earlier on in the course of my fellowship, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor stated that the U.S. was not pushing Ukraine to join NATO, but rather simply letting Ukraine know that the doors were open if they chose to move forward.

Of course, not everyone in Ukraine is salivating at the thought of Ukraine’s membership in NATO. Unfortunately, it is difficult find solid, reliable information on how many Ukrainians actually support NATO membership and how many are opposed to it. Everyone writing these articles has an agenda so finding figures online and posting them here won’t give you a good understanding of whether or not the idea is feasible among most Ukrainians. However, this article from the government of Ukraine gives you a basic idea of where public opinion stands at this point. All we know is that NATO membership is not as popular as EU membership, but opposition is growing less as people know more.

As for the protest today, yes, there were thousands of people on Maidan. However, some of them were paid. The pictures available on the articles of major international news agencies are probably the really mild protestors. I ran into a group of them carrying posters of half-Bush, half-Hitler, signs calling him a terrorist and fascist, as well as a big banner across a fence next to Maidan that said “*Expletive deleted* Bush, *Expletive deleted* NATO,” in English nonetheless. I probably shouldn’t show them here either, but I will show some of the other pictures I took with my mobile phone.

As you can see, there really weren’t that many and this was about 14:00. However, I avoided going near them.

The protesters walked right passed my office on Mykhailivska singing Katyusha.

As for tomorrow, I’ll be in Vinnytsia conducting my third case study so I won’t be around for President Bush’s visit. The most I got to see today was his motorcade going to pick him up from the airport followed by his advance security team heading towards the hotel. Tomorrow the streets of Kyiv will be plagued with traffic congested even moreso than usual because they will be closing down certain streets while the President conducts his visit. Not really regretting my absence…