The Command was not Obeyed

by Konrad Schuller
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 20 November 2004
[translated by Nykolai Bilaniuk for UKL]

During the night from the 27th to the 28th of November, Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior troops were supposed to suppress the Demonstration in Kyiv.

KYIV, 19 December. Lodgers have nested themselves in the late-Soviet lobby of the Trade Union building at Independence Square. To the left there's an exchange kiosk together with chickencoup chatter and cashiers wearing make-up, and also a sales booth for film, wire, and batteries. To the right is a makeshift post office. The porter's desk with its mighty telephones has survived from the old days. Passersby, people asking questions, and sentries with earmuffs hurry accross the stone floor, or just hang out.

Three weeks ago, during the night from the 27th to the 28th of November, this building - at the time the headquarters of the Ukrainian opposition under Viktor Yushchenko - played host to one of the dramatic situations of the "Orange Revolution." Borys Tarasiuk, the leader of the National Movement of Ukraine and a member of the executive committee of Yushchenko's Committee for National Salvation which guided the Revolution, remembers it well. It was ten o'clock at night. Tarasiuk, an old-school diplomat and until his retirement in September 2000 the Foreign Minister of Ukraine, had given the diplomatic corps in Kyiv a briefing about Yushchenko's future foreign policy, and then returned to this headquarters. As always on those nights, outside the main door to the "Maidan," that Independence Square, there was a dense, euphoric sea of people in orange: with flags and horns, laughter and waving, shouting and music from the stage.

However, shortly after ten, the mood inside the building suddenly turned. A telephone rang. It brought the news that everyone had feared: the X hour had arrived. Somebody who was "on the side of the people," a soldier or officer in the service of the authorities, had grabbed his cell phone and given the alarm: The "Interior troops," the feared special forces answering to the Minister of the Interior Bilokon', himself one of the toughest-minded men in the regime and a hardliner, had been given the command to go into action. They were to assemble, take on live munitions, and get ready to march: 13,000 men, who had been pulled together weeks earlier in various places around the capital city, the last available force of the regime, were to restore what Prime Minister Yanukovych today calls "order." The orders were distributed. While the people celebrated on the "Maidan," in the trade union building there began a race against time.

It should be noted that Tarasiuk's report on this is not some sailor's tall tale, nor a flight of revolutionary rhetoric from a the soul of a people prone to producing myths. To this day Kyiv is full of wild stories about the cocked & primed assault weapons of the regime, and scepticism is in order. However, this time the source of the stories is different. It isn't just Tarasiuk and the opposition, but also people in certain quiet circles, for whom to even mention anything is an indiscretion, and who are normally immune to the stories of ordinary Ukrainian folks. Their reports distinguish the rumours of 27 November from commonplace "Tatar sightings." One hears it whispered from off-stage: "That night was the last time when the regime tried to use force to end the revolution." The order was given to end the blockades of the presidential and administrative buildings, and to remove the revolutionaries' tent city from the main street, Khreshchatyk. "We know this with certainty. The next morning, as it were, we could still see the tire tracks."

How serious was the situation? Despite the night hour, there were tens of thousands of people on the streets. In the view of experts, the entities that were "to restore order" were neither equipped nor trained for peaceful deployment. They carried no batons or water cannon, but fully loaded Kalashnikovs - this was dead serious. "As we received the news, the troops were right in the middle of boarding trucks. Their engines were running" recalls Tarasiuk. "The country was on the brink of civil war."

In the Trade Union building people reacted with concentrated haste. They had long since established ties to the government apparatus. At the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the thread led to the very top, to Lieutenant-General Smeshko. Among the military officer's corps, many treated dealings with Prime Minister Yanukovych as a personal affront, since he was a criminal convicted of assault, and one who had never served in the forces. Serving admirals had previously stood beside Yushchenko on the podium. Entire detachments of the Police academy had appeared in full uniform and orange ribbons on the "Maidan." They also had friends in foreign governments, and those they now called also.

We can only guess who worked on whom that night. In the opinion of the people in the shadows, Yulia Tymoshenko, Yushchenko's combative woman sidekick, took on the army for herself. In any case Tarasiuk reports that some units of the regular combat forces were even ready to "place themselves in between" in case the Interior Ministry troops were to march. Another witness, Yushchenko's old confidant Oleh Rybachuk, reported that even in the Interior Ministry of the grim Bilokon' and his equally grim deputy Popkov, there was open unwillingness to follow orders. In the closest circles around the minister, the leadership made it quite clear that "no one" would follow the orders that had been given to achieve a solution by force. In the early morning, the punitive expedition finally collapsed like a bicycle inner tube that had rolled over a thumbtack. "By two o'clock we had the situation under control" remembers Tarasiuk. What remains unclear is by whom the orders of that night were issued, although Popkov has admitted to passing them along further. The troops had collected their ammunition and had readied themselves for action, but perhaps thought it was only an exercise. Who stood behind Popkov, that is nebulous. Several originators of the orders can be imagined: Prime Minister Yanukovych, President Kuchma, or his feared chief of staff Medvedchuk. The sources in the shadows run dry on this point: "We don't know from whom the order came. We only know that it wasn't followed" says the voice offstage.

In Yushchenko's camp people lean to the view that two men above all others wanted to resort to force: the head of government, Yanukovych, and Kuchma's chief of staff Medvedchuk. The role of the President himself is thereby left unclear. He is neither defended nor directly attacked. Seemingly Kuchma did not endorse the recommendation to use force, conjectures Rybachuk. Here emerges a hairline crack in the camp of the authorities, that could have grown into the hatred between Yanukovych and his erstwhile mentor Kuchma.

It is therefore only an opinion to say that Yanukovych and Medvedchuk were behind the drama of that November night, and less so the president. All the same, this theory is plausible.Yanukovych has in the meantime denied that he urged a reluctant Kuchma to opt for the use of force. However, he does not disavow speaking to the President about "the restoration of order." The cleavage between the hesitant Kuchma and the hot-tempered Yanukovych has since grown into an open fusillade of insults. After so bitterly disappointing Yanukovych, Kuchma cut a compromise with the opposition. Immediately thereafter the Prime Minister took a short break and went angrily back to his eastern strongholds, the grumpy Malochian cities around Donetsk and Luhansk.

Today the revolutionary stage on the "Maidan" stands still in the winter air. The masses have gone home, and on Khreshchatyk only a few stragglers are waiting around at oildrum ovens. Everyone is awaiting the repeat vote on the 26th of December. The staff of the movement has largely cleaned up the Trade Union building. Only one sandwich counter remains for the last campers. Around a table full of crums, paper cups and teabags, freezing teenagers hang their heads in the plush chairs that were once green, and sleep. It smells of campaigning, tension, and wet socks. The revolution is taking a break.