This month marks the twentieth anniversary of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. When protests over a rigged presidential election first erupted in downtown Kyiv on November 22, 2004, few observers could have imagined that they were witnessing the opening act in a geopolitical drama that would eventually lead to the largest European conflict since World War II. And yet there can be little doubt that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s desire to crush Ukraine first began to take shape two decades ago as he watched the Ukrainian people defy their own authoritarian rulers and demand a democratic future.
For the past twenty years, there has been a tendency to view the Orange Revolution primarily as a political failure. This assessment is easy enough to understand. After all, while the revolution overturned a fraudulent presidential vote and brought reformist candidate Viktor Yushchenko to power, it did not lead to the kind of political transformation that the millions of Ukrainians who participated in the protest movement hoped for. Instead, Yushchenko spent much of his presidency squabbling with colleagues and compromising with opponents, before eventually losing the 2010 election to Orange Revolution villain Viktor Yanukovych.
While the revolution clearly fell short of its lofty political goals, focusing exclusively on domestic Ukrainian politics is short-sighted. In order to appreciate the true historic significance of the Orange Revolution, it must viewed in a far broader context…
Voice of Ukraine 