Amid protests against the Ukrainian government, Penn students and a faculty member from the country see a renewed sense of unity in the eastern European state.
The students and faculty member feel that the over two months of protests caused the traditionally oppositional eastern and the western regions of the country to agree in an unprecedented fashion.
Protests against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to reject a proposed trade agreement with the European Union have entered their 11th week in Kiev, the country’s capital. Despite the bitter cold and police brutality, demonstrators continue to occupy Independence Square in the heart of the city.
Yunakovych’s November rejection of the EU deal in favor of developing closer economic and political ties to Russia sparked the protests. However, the protests have since grown in size and scope from demonstrations in support of European partnership into larger uprisings against the perceived corruption and abuses of the Yunakovych regime.
“[Kiev feels] different because you have a military-style camp in the middle of the city,” Russian history doctoral candidate Iuliia Skubytska said, recalling her trip home last month to visit friends and family. “The whole camp itself was a symbol that something is completely wrong with the country.”
Skubytska grew up in eastern Ukraine, home to a sizable population of ethnic Russians who migrated to the region while the country was part of the Soviet Union. She studied and worked in Kiev for several years before coming to Penn to earn her doctorate.
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Many of her friends from college still live in Kiev today and are taking part in the ongoing “Euromaidan” protests, which is how the protests are referred to in Ukraine. However, there are currently no Penn undergraduates studying abroad in Ukraine, according to Penn Abroad Director Barbara Gorka.
She recalled how the protests have united many people in the city and across the country, describing how people came, protested and offered food, hot drinks and shelter to the protesters. Many offered medical assistance to injured protesters, Skubytska said, since those taken to a hospital are often arrested and brought before a judge before they even have a chance to see a doctor.
She said many in the Russified eastern regions support the anti-government protesters, but are unable to stage demonstrations because the local governments back President Yanukovych and disperse demonstrators by force.
“When the protest became a protest against beating innocent people, many people in the Eastern regions began to support [them] because unlimited power in the hands of the police is not good anywhere whether you support Russia or not,” she said.
Leonid Rudnytzky, a professor of Ukrainian studies, is amazed to see the unity that the protests have brought to the Ukrainian people.
“This revolution — if you want to call it that — has brought Ukrainians together of all walks of life and from all regions,” he said. “There used to be this great divide between east and west in Ukraine. This divide is slowly but surely disappearing because [so many people] hate Yanukovych — even people in his own party — and everyone wants to be part of Europe.”
Rudnytzky was born in Lviv, Ukraine and immigrated to the United States following the World War II. Before coming to Penn, he taught central and eastern European studies both at LaSalle University and the Ukrainian Free University in Munich, Germany.
Many of his former students and colleagues have joined in the Euromaidan protests, and he joked that perhaps if he were 10 or 20 years younger, he would be there too, comparing the feelings of pride and unity in the country today to those that came at the fall of the USSR.
“Growing up in America you’re so used to democracy — what the people want really matters,” said Taya Hnateyko, a College sophomore and granddaughter of four Ukrainian immigrants. “The people there want to join the European Union, they want democracy, they don’t want a dictatorship.”
“Everything in Ukrainian-American life right now is surrounding that,” said Hnateyko, who studies Ukranian with Rudnytzky. She said that people were supporting each other, adding she felt like “everyone’s on the same page.”
“The feeling of unity has never been that strong before,” Rudnytzky added.
A previous version of this article stated that Director of Penn Abroad Barbara Gorka said that no Penn students were in Ukraine this semester. Gorka said that there are no Penn undergraduates studying abroad there at this time.
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