President Yanukovych has set off for Vilnius, but why is he going to the European summit? It’s a mystery. So much so that his supporters lugged the coffin of European rapprochement through Kiev, wrapped in the flag of gays and lesbians. The anti-European campaign organised by the chimerical – or rather, virtual – social movement Ukrainian Choice has become ridiculous and exasperating. Posters and signs have been put up all over the country with images showing that all Ukrainians, after the signature of the Association Agreement with the EU, will become homosexuals. Even in the metro, each time you take an escalator, you have to pass dozens of these posters. In Kiev, this propaganda campaign is considered laughable, but I am afraid that in the east and in the provinces, people will naively believe that universal conversion to homosexuality is the condition imposed by Europe on Ukraine for the signature of the treaty.
Putin reminded us again today that Ukrainian banks and companies owe Russian banks more than $30 billion. And that’s without counting government debts. Russia is continuing its economic war against Ukraine. Today it banned the importation of Ukrainian porcelain.
Snow fell during the day, but it melted on contact with the ground. In the Maidan, some five thousand students arrived in an orderly fashion. In the evening, Slava Vakarchuk, singer with the rock band Okean Elzy, went onstage to encourage the people gathered there not to give up, not to despair, even if tomorrow in Vilnius Yanukovych does not sign the Association Agreement. He wanted to slip away after his short speech, but the crowd shouted out: ‘Sing! Sing!’ And so, without musical accompaniment, in chorus with the thousands of people at the rally, he launched into ‘Get up, my darling, get up!’
In spite of everything, the country is not getting up the way it did to protest against the falsification of the presidential election results in 2004. This is not a new Orange Revolution. It is simply the refusal to bury the European dream. In the south and in the east, that dream simply does not exist. For Donetsk and Sevastopol, Europe is too distant. It is much closer for western Ukraine,5 for Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk and Chernivtsi. That is why people there are up in arms, while in eastern Ukraine all is silent.