Last Friday Viktor Yushchenko made a second visit to Donetsk since becoming head of state. He honored the memory of coal miners, laying flowers at St. Barbara’s Chapel, the monument to miners who have died in the line of duty. He also met with the employees of Nord Ltd., Ukraine’s largest producer of home refrigerators. As his visit was drawing to a close, President Yushchenko conferred for several hours with the regional leadership and, later, with the media.
The only reminders to Donetsk residents about the president’s visit were six illuminated billboards on Lenin Square reading “Donetsk oblast cordially welcomes the president of Ukraine” and numerous greetings from the advertising agency Plasma (the one that apologized to Yushchenko for depicting him in a Nazi outfit in October 2003). There was also a much larger than usual number of policemen and municipal cleaners on the streets, who were making a Herculean effort to “polish” the roads and sidewalks.
There were practically no protest actions by the opposition and the various movements that have cropped up in Donbas in the past six months.
Many Donetsk residents were sure that the Party of Regions would raise the Kolesnykov question with the president. But the party seemed reluctant to spoil the president’s visit to the Donbas capital.
The only people who staged pickets and organized a handful of attention-grabbing protest actions were militants from the “We” civic organization, the Union of Those Born by the Revolution, the Movement for Ukraine without Yushchenko, and Donetsk communists. The first three organizations chose to unite and stage joint protest actions in various parts of the city. The hub of the protest was, naturally, downtown’s Lenin Square, where a few tents have been pitched for some time with placards reading “For Ukraine without Yushchenko!” as well as a large tent for collecting signatures and donations for the movement, and accepting applications from potential activists. Next to the tents is a veritable “wailing wall,” a canvas densely studded with homemade leaflets featuring slogans, verses, jokes and limericks “glorifying” the performance of the president, the premier, and the cabinet. This “wall” draws large crowds, but it manages to elicit nothing but grins.
Nearly a week earlier, the civic organization “We” put up tents near Donetsk Airport, together with a few antitank “hedgehogs” as a clear sign of their intentions. But law- enforcement officers quickly removed them. One activist is already testifying on this matter at the municipal division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
In contrast to these actions, a more moving and low-key show of protest was staged by the Donetsk oblast committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine in front of the Oblast State Administration building. About a thousand picketers from all the oblast’s districts and cities, mostly elderly people, gathered early in the morning to urge the president to call off the increase in public utility charges, re-introduce reasonable food prices, pay coal miners their back wages, grant Russian the status of a second official language, and drop the WTO membership bid. The protesters were very disappointed when they learned that the president was not going to visit the administration, as their rally would go unnoticed.
On the other hand, the president’s numerous supporters had gathered well in advance in front of the Youth Palace, where Mr. Yushchenko met with representatives of the municipal authorities, the general public, and the business elite. In his speech the Ukrainian leader emphasized that he was ready “to visit a third, fourth, or fifth time” not in order to settle scores with anybody but to find mutual understanding.
The president also met with the family of the murdered journalist Ihor Aleksandrov. He promised his government’s support to the members of the journalist’s family and assured them that it would redouble its effort to solve this crime.
