Ένα χρόνο μετά: Οι διαμαρτυρίες του Ιουλίου επιστρέφουν στην Ουκρανία

A year ago, thousands of people took to the streets of every major Ukrainian city to protest against moves to restrict the independence and capacity of the country’s anti-corruption institutions. The status quo was restored fairly quickly, helped by simultaneous pressure from Ukraine’s western partners. I analysed last year’s protests in detail in an earlier article, “Street protests in Ukraine: causes, features and consequences”.

A year has passed, and once again the “people with cardboard signs”, as they call themselves, have taken to the streets of Ukraine’s major cities. What does all this mean? What are the causes and what might be the consequences?

Background

Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko resigned at the initiative of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which meant the resignation of the entire government. Various reasons were suggested for the move, but it soon became clear that the main objective was neither to appoint a stronger manager, Serhii Koretskyi, to the country’s top executive post, nor to separate ministries that had previously been mistakenly merged. Rather, it was to remove Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov.

Political commentators point to three possible reasons for Fedorov’s dismissal. First, there was his conflict with the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi. President Zelenskyy himself cited this reason, and although Syrskyi denied it, all available sources confirm that such a conflict existed. We will return to its substance below. Second, there are claims that the defence minister introduced a procurement system that was more transparent and based on performance data, thereby running counter to the interests of influential arms manufacturers. Third, the young and energetic defence minister had become remarkably popular with the public, which greatly irritated President Zelenskyy, who still harbours hopes of winning post-war elections, whenever they may eventually take place. It is difficult to say which of these explanations is correct, or whether all three are true to some degree.

Many people in Ukraine dislike Fedorov. After all, he was one of the key architects of Zelenskyy’s successful presidential election campaign, something the president’s opponents have not forgiven him for. Others point to allegations of corruption among people around the minister, his insufficient attention to cybersecurity and personal data protection, and many other concerns. Yet despite all this, Mykhailo Fedorov became remarkably popular, primarily for reforms made at his previous position of a Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, but not only for that.

His special popularity among young people cannot be explained by youth alone. The age difference between him and Prime Minister Svyrydenko, for example, is not particularly large. Yet she is far less popular, despite what was, overall, a reasonably successful year in terms of resilience, as well as populist cash handouts to various sections of the population.

The reasons for Mykhailo Fedorov’s popularity are therefore connected less with his personality than with the situation that triggered the protests. Let us examine them in greater detail.

The nature of the protests

The immediate trigger for the street protests was the news that the president did not intend to nominate Fedorov to the new government and instead proposed that the much less popular Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko should head the defence ministry. The explanation offered was simple: Fedorov had failed to deliver the urgently needed reform of mobilization, whereas Klymenko would succeed.

Government reshuffles in Ukraine are usually routine affairs that attract little public interest. This time, however, the trigger worked. The question is why.

Most of those taking part in the protests are young people below mobilization age, but there are also many veterans, some of them seriously wounded. The protests emerged spontaneously from youth networks created last year to defend the independence of the anti-corruption institutions. They were subsequently joined by influential bloggers and volunteers sympathetic to minister Fedorov.

The current protests are based on two key ideas.

First, in the eyes of the active part of Ukrainian society, Fedorov has become associated with the idea of asymmetric, innovative, high-tech warfare and horizontal, network-based management. In the public imagination, he came to be seen as the antithesis of Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi, unquestionably a hero of the war, but also a proponent of a more traditional Soviet school of military thought. At precisely the same time, Ukrainian society was shaken by reports of extremely brutal treatment of soldiers in one regiment associated with the old Soviet military culture.

The idea of asymmetric warfare has been embodied in the successes of the Ukrainian Defence Forces in striking Russia’s oil-refining industry, its shadow fleet and logistics; in attacks on heavily protected Moscow and targets as far away as Siberia; and in creating a logistical crisis for the Russian occupation forces in Crimea. Preparations for these attacks began long before Fedorov took office, but it was over the past six months that they acquired such scale and visibility. Fedorov was appointed in January.

In other words, Fedorov became associated with the hope that Ukraine could win through asymmetric methods. For a democratic country that is considerably smaller than Russia, preserving the life of every soldier is enormously important.

The first fundamental cause of the protests is therefore a conflict between two approaches to warfare. On one side stands the traditional Soviet school, focused on discipline, hierarchy and strict execution of orders. On the other is a modern, high-tech school focused on networks, innovation and asymmetric warfare.

These two approaches have come to be personified by two prominent figures representing different generations, although in reality this personalization is clearly an oversimplification. Moreover, Ukrainian legislation does not distinguish sufficiently clearly between the functions of the civilian defence minister and those of the military commander-in-chief. This creates an awkward duality of authority that works well only when the two men share the same vision.

The dismissal of the defence minister therefore created the impression that the old school had prevailed and that the hope placed in asymmetric warfare was being lost.

Thus, although many of the slogans displayed in the squares of Ukrainian cities focused on specific individuals, it is important to emphasize that this is not fundamentally about names. It is about a conflict between two approaches and two systems.

The second important idea behind the protests concerns politics in conditions where a normal political process is effectively absent. Elections cannot be held until the war is over, and nobody knows when that will be. Yet the demand for political participation is enormous, while the opportunities to satisfy it are virtually non-existent.

The only way to accommodate this demand is through a broader distribution of power. Society wants people in government who have views of their own and who can balance and restrain personalized rule. It wants fewer loyalists and more competent professionals; checks and balances; genuine discussion; the ability to say, “No, Mr President, this is a bad idea”; and public explanations of why decisions are taken.

This demand will only grow. Politicians can gain political capital by responding to it, or lose it by attempting to resist it. Ukrainian society opposes an excessive concentration of power and wants to see senior state officials who possess independent judgement and positions of their own.

President Zelenskyy offered no explanation for his personnel reshuffle. A significant part of society interpreted this behaviour as a sign of authoritarianism — and, by extension, as a loss of hope for a better future. On questions of war and peace, society demands openness, accountability and reasoned justification.

Parliament, one of the central institutions of democracy, failed to act as a safeguard. Ukrainian society therefore once again demonstrated its inclination towards the street democracy of the “viche”, or popular assembly — a tradition with a thousand-year history. The people are sovereign. If they cannot express their will through elections, they will express it in the public square.

It can be argued that, with his decision, President Zelenskyy once again violated Ukraine’s wartime social contract. Society agrees to regard its politicians as legitimate and to refrain from criticizing them, while politicians are expected in return to respond to the public demand for fairness and properly justified decisions.

A country cannot be governed and ministers cannot be appointed through street democracy. But when democratic mechanisms cease to function, street democracy sends a powerful signal that certain methods of governance are unacceptable. It is an extreme means of getting a message through to politicians who have closed off their channels of feedback from society at a time when the normal political process has necessarily been suspended.

Thus, the unpopular, old-school commander-in-chief, despite his considerable achievements and merits, ultimately became a lightning rod for the president himself.

A July tradition

Despite numerous political scandals over the year since last July, there had been no street protests in Ukraine during that time. This was not because Ukrainians protest only in summer — the country’s two largest revolutions both took place in winter, amid bitter cold.

Rather, protests in Ukraine cannot be triggered merely by personalities or political scandals. What can bring people into the streets is the loss of hope for a better future — a sharp rupture of the social contract with a sense of significant injustice.

Although many of the protesters’ slogans are personalized, the essence of the protests is therefore not about individuals but about principles. This becomes clear when one analyses the messages written on their cardboard signs and speaks to the participants. The first principle is asymmetric warfare, technology instead of the Soviet approach, and the need to protect the lives of soldiers. The second is transparency, openness and proper justification of government decisions. The third is Russia’s reaction as a yardstick for judging the quality of those decisions. If Russians are pleased, the thinking goes, then the decision is unlikely to strengthen Ukraine’s defence capability. In addition, many slogans stressed the need to resolve the situation quickly and the impossibility of dragging matters out during wartime.

Last year’s street protests in defence of the anti-corruption institutions received strong support from Ukraine’s western partners. The current protests concern matters on which outside stakeholders cannot properly take a position, leaving the protesters face to face with the authorities.

Public support for the protests, however, has been much higher this time. According to a survey by Active Group, 85 per cent of citizens had heard about the president’s decision, while 74 per cent did not support it. A level of disapproval this high cannot simply be ignored.

Conclusion

As I write these lines, events are still unfolding. Nevertheless, the problems have already begun to be addressed.

First, President Zelenskyy heard the message from the streets and began consultations with key military commanders, keeping society informed regularly and in considerable detail. There were dozens of meetings in an almost continuous stream.

Second, the president dismissed Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi and appointed Mykhailo Drapatyi in his place.

Drapatyi belongs to a different generation: officers who entered the war in 2014 in relatively junior positions and, over the following 12 years, accumulated an intensity of combat experience unmatched anywhere in the world. He is described as a proponent of innovation, horizontal connections and trust-based delegation. Senior generals have often been accused of tying the hands of this cohort of officers and preventing their advancement.

Thus, in the confrontation between the old and new schools, it was the new school of warfare that prevailed — prompting exuberant reactions among Ukrainian commentators and deep gloom among their Russian counterparts.

The temporary acting defence minister, Yevhenii Khmara, is also a supporter of these new approaches. He built his military career in the Special Operations Centre “A” of the Security Service of Ukraine, also known as “Alpha”.

The ultimate future of the defence minister’s post, and the personal political future of Mykhailo Fedorov, remained unresolved as this article went to press.

Ukraine is still a long way from being a perfect democracy. But Ukrainian society is a living political community, firmly committed to democratic development and membership in the European Union. And the Ukrainian authorities are capable of hearing signals from society and correcting their own mistakes.

A system is defined not by whether it makes mistakes, but by how it responds to them.

From this perspective, despite a difficult period of anxiety and confrontation, this story is ultimately more optimistic than not.

Valerii Pekar is a chairman of the board of the Decolonization NGO, the author of four books, an adjunct professor at the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School and Business School of the Ukrainian Catholic University, and a former member of the National Reform Council.