Futile Effort, New Maidan, or Neither? October Protests in Kyiv

A new political season has opened. This fact was made abundantly clear to Kyiv residents on October 18, as the police patrol had increased its presence downtown. The reason? Mass protests that started a day earlier near the Ukrainian parliament building.

Indeed, if the situation in Ukraine were judged based on the number of political forces and civic organizations participating in the protest, a likely conclusion would be that Ukrainian society had come together in a broad antigovernmental coalition. The participants involved entities and actors from across the political spectrum, including such diverse groups as the KyivPride LGBT activists and nationalist parties such as Svoboda and the Right Sector, and pro-European liberals from the Democratic Alliance and numerous civic organizations and supporters of the For Life party, whose rhetoric tends to be aimed at the traditionally pro-Russian regions of the country.