Previous Subchapter → 1.6 Maidan - Pro vs Anti
But the conflict wasn’t as simple as Pro EU Maidan and Pro Russia Anti Maidan, within the Maidan there was another element as well, the far right, who sought to exploit the unrest for their own agenda and give their idolisation of WW2 era Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera and the SS Galicia Division a more mainstream platform, they had almost nothing in common with the rest of the Maidan, which consisted mostly of liberals, progressives and moderates, but the 2 sides shared an opposition to Yanukovych and to Russian influence. The most notable of these far right groups were the Svoboda Party, which emerged in the early 2000s, and the Right Sector, a coalition of various far right groups, including elements of the KUN, which emerged during the Maidan itself.
[Editor’s Note: The KUN element mentioned here is the “Trident” organisation]
These groups united with several Pro EU liberal parties in a formal organisation called “All-Ukrainian Union Maidan”, which formed paramilitary groups known as the “Maidan Self Defence Groups” to lead the fight against the Anti Maidan and government forces, the far right and liberal groups of the Maidan quietly tolerated each other to oppose these mutual enemies, even as the far right set out to hijack the Maidan’s agenda and replace it with their own.
And hijack they did, these groups were not widely supported by Ukrainians either in the east or the west, but they were militant, prominent, and willing to go all out to oppose both Yanukovytch and Russian influence, and fighters loyal to groups like Right Sector led the charge at the helm of the “Self-Defence Groups”.
The visibility of far right groups like Right Sector during the Maidan protests increased the hostility of the Anti Maidan in response, as they began to see the modern Ukrainian conflict between them and the Maidan as a kind of parallel with the conflict between Soviet Ukraine and insurgent groups like Bandera’s OUN of the 1940s, suddenly the Anti Maidan had a new name for the Maidan supporters, “Banderite”, Ukraine’s World War Two legacy came back to haunt its people.
After Yanukovych refused to compromise with the Euromaidan, with his government insisting there would be no return to negotiations with the EU, the crisis progressively got worse; The protests spiralled out of control and spread across Ukraine, leading to violent confrontations between the two protest camps and the police across the country.
These confrontations escalated into riots and then, at the start of 2014, into a full scale uprising, like a pin being pulled out of a grenade.
Waves of Maidan protesters began occupying government buildings across Ukraine and by late January 2014 almost half of Ukraine’s regional governments had been ousted and replaced by the rioters, these activists then declared the regions under their control to be “independent” from the central government, in some instances even “banning” the ruling party and its allies.
Author: Lvivske Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0
With the West of Ukraine coming under the control of the separatists and the East remaining with the government, there was a genuine fear from some observers that Ukraine could be split into 2 states, one controlled by the opposition and the Maidan and the other controlled by the government and the Anti-Maidan.
In a last ditch attempt to prevent this kind of outcome, opposition leaders made a deal with the government on the 21st of February, where early elections would be held and more power would be transferred from the presidency to the Ukrainian parliament, but Right Sector and other opposition militants from the so-called “Maidan Self-Defence Groups” rejected the deal, threatening to storm Yanukovych’s house and the Ukrainian parliament building if the government didn’t resign, the next day Yanukovytch fled Kyiv and the militants took control of parliament and other government offices, during the occupation opposition members of parliament impeached Yanukovytch, appointed a new leadership headed by the opposition, known as the “interim government”, ousted top judges, and replaced the country’s regional governors, the far right movements benefitted from this new leadership, with groups like Svoboda receiving official posts in the new government.
The impeachment process that brought this new government to power was unconstitutional, as rather than following the constitution’s legal impeachment proceedings, which involve a trial for a specific crime, a 2 thirds majority vote from the parliament to accept the claims from the trial, a vote from the supreme court to validate the decisions, and finally a 3 quarters vote for conviction, the opposition MPs instead passed a basic resolution declaring Yanukovytch was absent from his post due to his flight from Kyiv, something which wasn’t a crime or an impeachable offence, the opposition also failed to achieve the 2 thirds majority due to an absence of most MPs from the ruling party during the vote, as a result of these irregularities Yanukovytch rejected the impeachment and maintained his claim to the Presidency, resulting in a constitutional crisis.
In terms of public support, in the east of Ukraine, an Anti Maidan stronghold, the local population was much more split on the Maidan than the rest of the country, where most had been willing to look past the murkiness involved in Yanukovych’s removal due to either a shared Pro Western sentiment with the new government, or a resentment for the violent role Ukrainian government forces played in the Maidan clashes under his watch.
Poll results indicated that in the West of the country most believed that the Maidan had been a kind of “revolution” against a “dictator”, while the East saw it as a coup against an elected leader, and didn’t recognise the opposition’s takeover, much of the population had also begun to believe a civil war was possible or certain.
After leaving Kyiv for the Kharkiv region Yanukovytch later moved to exile in Russia, but he still refused to resign, he later gave a press conference denouncing the events as a coup and claiming he was shot at while leaving the capital, shortly after he requested that Russian troops intervene to restore order.