The Ukrainians defeated an autocratic regime. They chose democracy and want a constitutional state. But DW's Bernd Johann warns that this new departure could be blocked by homegrown oligarchs and by Moscow, reports GHN based on DW.
1989 was a turning point for Europe. The Berlin Wall fell in Germany, and brave citizens from Tallinn to Warsaw to Bucharest and Sofia liberated themselves from Soviet rule. Now, 25 years on, people in Europe are still fighting for freedom and democracy. It was exactly one year ago that people in Ukraine started protesting on the Euromaidan against their corrupt, authoritarian government. What they wanted was a new Ukraine: democracy and a constitutional state. For many of the demonstrators, the countries of the European Union served as a role model.
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians stuck it out for months on Independence Square in Kyiv and in other Ukrainian cities, defying both the bitter winter cold and increasingly brutal state-sponsored violence. Finally the revolution succeeded. The country's rulers capitulated and fled to Russia, which had supported the regime and continues to this day to condemn the protests as a coup d'etat.
Since then the Kremlin has seen its influence diminish in Ukraine, a development it considers to be a threat to its own power. People in Ukraine, however, call it their "Revolution of Dignity," because they were no longer prepared to allow an autocratic system to continue humiliating and robbing them. But it's a battle that's far from won.