Here the crowd is the kingmaker

This protest is no longer about the US or Russian candidate, but ending 12 years of misrule

Nick Paton Walsh in Kiev
Monday November 29, 2004
The Gaurdian

Who could want to be a revolutionary these days? For a start, your task is to bring down some of the world's most resiliently corrupt and dirty regimes. Secondly, you have to court an expansionist White House, or dissidents with their own agenda, to stump up the cash. And once you have the critical mass on the streets, you have to fend off a broad onslaught on your financing and motives.

Such should not be the lot of the hundreds of thousands who, in temperatures of minus 10, have stood out for a week to try and bring about change. Ukraine's political elite has barely changed since independence from the Soviet Union in 1992. These people are tired of the old post-Soviet ways.

The past week in Kiev has ignited the imagination of the international media about a renewed spat between Russia and the west. In the opening days, the crowds were fuelled by the alleged dirty tricks that had deprived the west's clear favourite, Viktor Yushchenko, of the presidency. Yet since the government declared its prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich, to be the winner, their mood has changed. This protest is no longer about America's or Russia's candidate, but an end to the past 12 years of misrule.

This change partly undermines complaints that Yushchenko has strong links with Washington (true), or that the US state department has poured millions into the "Free Election" campaign (true), which can only really benefit the opposition.

The crowd has become the kingmaker, not Washington. Yushchenko is just the opportunist profiting from that awakening. In fact, the two Viktors, before Moscow and Washington hijacked their campaigns, were not proposing radically different programmes. Both, for example, said they would pull Ukrainian troops out of Iraq very soon. The main difference is that Yushchenko is more free-market than Yanukovich, who prefers Soviet-style command economics. Yet given how Ukraine is slowly heading west in terms of the speed of its economic growth, and how perilously reliant on natural resources Moscow's budget now is, Ukraine needs Yushchenko's approach if it is to reform.

But still the anti-opposition campaign continues. Elements of the liberal western media - have hinted at the nascent nationalism and antisemitism of the crowds that have gathered on Kreshatik. But standing in the centre of Kiev amid an enormously chaotic, often drunk, yet always peaceful, crowd, it is hard to feel the hot breath of extremism down your neck.

It is true that Ukrainian nationalists in the west have tried to ride on the coat-tails of the opposition movement. Some, like the ultra-nationalist Una-Unso group, have been distanced. Others have been told to modify their statements. In Britain, we do not write off as racist Michael Howard because of a Tory backbencher's backward views on immigration.

There is also a bizarre belief that Ukraine, which has been occupied or controlled by Moscow since the 17th century, does not have the right to independent status; that Yushchenko's pro-Ukrainian rhetoric is dangerous "nationalism". But is being Ukrainian really such a bad thing? Ethnic Tatars in the Crimea do not seem to think so. They have backed Yushchenko.

The genuine popular backing for Yanukovich has been woefully overestimated. The only real sense of conviction from his side comes from miners who fear Yushchenko will shut the old, dangerous mines (he probably will and should). Otherwise it's hard to get into a discussion with many in the Yanukovich crowd about his policies. I tried to once with Seriozh, 23, a driver from Dnipropetrovsk. He was led away by a drunken superior as he struggled to find an answer.

The pro-opposition media is ridiculously partisan, but Yanukovich took over the national media to boost his electoral campaign. He has hired DBC, a PR firm headed by an ex-Washington lobbyist, to spam journalists on his behalf. They circulated a report by the British Helsinki Human Rights Group that, contradicting most countries bar China, Russia, Belarus and the central Asian states, said the election was fair.

It is hard, particularly since the grotesque abuse of the democratic cause witnessed in the occupation of Iraq, to retain any respect for the western export or support of democracy. Uzbekistan, a brutal US-backed regime, is testimony to how fickle American values can be in the former Soviet Union.

Yet Independence Square is a warming experience. People are, for the first time, realising how they could one day have a government whose main interest is not stealing from state coffers and protecting favoured oligarchs, but actually representing the people who elected them. For most people, this is a first taste of real self-determination.

Some of the crowd come out with pro-freedom epithets that would make White House speechwriters proud. The difference is that they seem genuinely to believe in them. Our loss of faith in these values should not condemn their enjoyment of them.

· Nick Paton Walsh is the Guardian's Moscow correspondent