MOSCOW, September 16 (RIA Novosti), Ekaterina Blinova - The Euromaidan movement in Kiev, despite efforts to glorify it, has left the Ukrainian people disenchanted and confused, claims Sam Koebrich, an American journalist and photographer, in his article "The Confusing Legacy of Ukraine's Revolutionary Protest Movement."
"A Willy Wonka–esque president was elected on pro-European promises, but the Euromaidan movement remained camped out in central Kiev. Most of those still present were stigmatized as vagrants and outcasts – the Occupy treatment. In the past few weeks, most of the camps have been cleared out of Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) in an effort to promote "beautification," a petty attempt to attract some source of legitimate tourism back to Kiev."
Kiev's central square, Maidan Nezalezhnosti or Independence Square, was cleaned out in August despite the protests of Euromaidan activists.
"#Maidan today. W/out memorials, it seems like the Maidan movement never existed. Everything cleaned up," wrote a Twitter user named Dmitri on August 21, 2014.
#Maidan today. W/out memorials, it seems, the Maidan movement has never existed. Everything cleaned up. #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/CUOKVMPdjE
— Dmitriy (@MirDmit) August 21, 2014
It's obvious that the revolt has changed the country. However, questions remain as to whether the Ukrainian people have benefited from the Euromaidan coup.
Sam Koebrich depicts the abandonment of the Ukrainians by their government: Euromaidan protesters and refugees from different parts of Ukraine, who were "living in the middle of a square [Maidan Nezalezhnosti] without government or NGO assistance because they had nowhere else to go."
The journalist was left disillusioned by what he saw in Ukraine: "Kiev is trying to return to normalcy by telling Euromaidan to move on, but it's moves like this that drive tourists to absurd monuments of the conflict like the Mezhyhirya Residence [ousted President Yanukovich's residence]," he says.
Sam Koebrich describes how he has met Ukrainian neo-Nazi youths in Odessa, in a report, "Why Ukraine's Generation Y Is So Confused," and cites one of them as saying: "These niggers, Russians, Azerbaijanis. They come to Ukraine and hurt our economy. They're cheap. They took my job. I don't have a problem with niggers in Africa, but [I do] when they come to Ukraine… For that, I'm a Nazi."
"Nazis are a big deal here," notes the journalist, calling them "Ukraine's confused youths."
Many of the Euromaidan activists are now totally disenchanted. "Will the country emerge from the wreckage as a better, cleaner one? Some of the heroes of the Maidan revolution, which toppled the corrupt government of President Viktor Yanukovych in February, are beginning to doubt that," writes Leonid Bershidsky, a founding editor of Russia's top business daily, Vedomosti, in his article "Ukraine's Revolutionaries Surrender to Corruption" published by Bloomberg View.
The journalist emphasizes that the new Kiev leadership, empowered by Euromaidan "heroes," is not interested in attacking the Ukrainian tycoons and fight corruption. "Ukraine is still, however, an incredibly corrupt and business-unfriendly country," Leonid Bershidsky stresses, adding that Ukrainians feel frustrated by the fact that "the gains of the revolution are not yet won."
The EU-Ukrainian trade deal delay, announced by Petro Poroshenko on Friday, has only added fuel to the fire. This trade pact has always been considered crucial by the Euromaidan movement’s participants. According to Agence France-Presse, political analysts warn that "the decision to delay the ex-Soviet state's economic tilt westward could spark a repeat of the deadly Euromaidan protests that toppled Kremlin-backed Viktor Yanukovych three months after his November rejection of the same pact."
On the other hand, economists admit that if Kiev signs the pact now, it "will sink" the Ukrainian economy "even further," according to the media source. Experts underscore that the decision of former Ukrainian President Yanukovich to postpone the implementation of the deal that triggered the Euromaidan unrest was pragmatic and well-balanced.
Ukraine, split by the civil war, is suffering from a socio-economic crisis and the tyranny of corrupt oligarchs . It seems that these are the most visible consequences of the Euromaidan coup, experts admit.
