Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday commemorated the tenth anniversary of the bloody climax of the pro-Western Maidan protests in the Ukrainian capital Kiev. Dozens of people died violently.
“It is a reminder of the fact that ten years ago Ukrainians decided once and for all: we want and will live in only one European state,” the head of state said in a video message published on Tuesday.
The fighting in the squares and barricades of that time continues today at the front, he said, equating the protests to the war against Ukraine that Russia started almost two years ago. Together with his wife Olena Selenska, he placed lanterns on a memorial cross next to a chapel not far from Independence Square in Kiev.
Tens of thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets
The Maidan protests marked the beginning of the confrontation between the West and Russia that continues to this day in Ukraine. In the winter of 2013/2014, tens of thousands of Ukrainians demonstrated against Russia-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych and in favor of rapprochement with the EU.
February 20 was the bloody high point of the protests
In the center of Kiev, a permanent protest camp stood on Independence Square (Maidan Nezaleschnosti) for more than three months. At the height of the protests, on February 20, 2014 alone, about four dozen demonstrators were shot in what was then the Institutstrasse and the Maidan. During the protests, seventeen police officers were shot and dozens were injured by bullets. President Yanukovych first left Kiev and a little later Ukraine and went into exile in Russia.
Overthrow of Yanukovych as a pretext for annexation of Crimea
Yanukovych’s overthrow served as a pretext for Russia to subsequently annex the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea. In eastern Ukraine, Moscow-backed separatists broke away from Kiev. The years-long armed conflict in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions was in turn used by the Kremlin as justification for the invasion of Ukraine that began two years ago.
Source: Krone
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