Three years ago today, the first protests began on Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kiev, after President Viktor Yanukovych suspended preparations for signing the Association Agreement with the European Union.
Three years ago we ran this headline:
Ukraine Suspends Preparations for EU Association Agreement
The Ukrainian government suspended preparations for signing the Association Agreement today after a vote in parliament failed to achieve a sufficient majority to pass legislation that would allow the jailed former prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko to receive medical treatment abroad.
View full page →Many voices had been pushing Yanukovych to sign the association deal with the EU, and he had indicated that he was interested in doing so. Right before the deadline, however, Yanukovych traveled to Russia, where his caravan became "lost" en route to a meeting with Vladimir Putin.
Ukraine's President "Lost En Route" to Moscow?
In another chapter of Ukraine's economic and ideological struggle between Europe and Russia, the east and the west, Ukraine's president Viktor Yanukovych "got lost" on his way to have meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. There remains a debate, however, as to whether Yanukovych was secretly negotiating with Putin, or whether he was being snubbed by the Kremlin.
View full page →When Yanukovych abruptly announced that he would not sign the association agreement, large protests broke out and the crowds refused to leave Maidan.
After months of demonstrations, Yanukovych deployed Berkut riot police to violently disperse protesters and employed even more brutal means to quell dissent during the winter, including the abduction, torture and killing of activists, and, in the final days before he fled to Russia, snipers. Over a hundred protesters and activists were killed.
A permanent memorial to the dead was unveiled today, Liga.net and other Ukrainian media reported.
Relatives of the more than 100 demonstrators killed by government troops on Maidan Square came to pay their respects, laying flowers near a cross devoted to the "Heavenly Hundred" as the fallen are known.
See photo essay by Andriy Gudzenko for Liga.net.
Today was also a day of protests by Azov Battalion, a far-right group notorious for its Nazi regalia and extremist statements.
Ukrainska Pravda reported that Azov and its political party, the National Corps, staged a march in Kiev on Bankovaya, the office of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
"Азовцы" пошли маршем на Банковую
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View full page →Translation: Azov placed a memorial to the general prosecutors who had "buried the Maidan case."
The reference is to the fact that Yanukovych's forces who shot and killed protesters were not brought to trial; some of them have fled Ukraine.
-- Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, Pierre Vaux and James Miller