‘Return to the dark days': Protests take aim at Zelensky for first time in the war

Sydney Morning Herald

5 days ago

The crowd grew on Tuesday evening as the sun set on a hill just above Maidan Nezalezhnosti, a central square in Kyiv where more than a decade ago crowds gathered to protest the corruption of the Kremlin-aligned president at the time, Viktor Yanukovych, leading to his ouster.
'It is a very sad moment because for me it means we are going back in time when we had this same discussion,' said Mustafa Nayyem, a former member of parliament who took part in the earlier protests. 'It is very sad and very dangerous.'
Amelina said her husband had called her from the front, upset by news of the parliamentary vote, and told her that many other soldiers were also unhappy.
Activists and analysts see the legislation as part of a broader crackdown on independent news media, voices critical of the government and government oversight groups, both public and private, threatening hard-won progress towards democracy.
One of Ukraine's most prominent anti-corruption activists, and a frequent critic of the Zelensky administration, Vitaliy Shabunin, was accused in a court proceeding last week of evading military service and fraud.
He has denied the accusation, which his many domestic and international defenders call baseless, even farcical. If convicted, he could face a decade in prison.
There was a widespread view in Ukraine that Zelensky and his administration had grown cloistered, losing touch with the people.
'It's impossible to tolerate what's been happening these past weeks and months – the attacks on civic activists, the attacks on the anti-corruption system,' said Iryna Nemyrovych, 36, the director of the Ukrainian Health Centre, an independent research group.
'We've seen all of this before.'
Dmytro Koziatynskyi, a veteran of the Russo-Ukrainian war, was one of many influential figures calling for protests.
'Time is not on our side,' he said in a message shared widely online.
'We must take to the streets tonight and urge Zelensky to prevent a return to the dark days of Yanukovych. See you this evening!'
The demonstrators were largely young and peaceful, and there was little police presence, with only few security personnel at the barricades outside the presidential complex of offices.
There were also protests in Lviv and other cities as public anger swelled and word spread of the gatherings.
One demonstrator in Kyiv, Sashko Adamliuk, 25, said Ukraine was fighting for more than land.
'Our democracy is under attack,' he said. Like many of those gathered, he feared the government was systematically stifling dissent.
Oleksandr Teren, 29, a veteran who lost both his legs in combat, said the actions of the government were an affront to all those who had sacrificed so much in the war.