It was late evening one year ago when the Ukrainian opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko, issued his rousing call for an uprising against the skewed election.
Andriy Chuprin, a burly 43-year-old entrepreneur, heard the rallying cry to Kiev's rain-lashed Independence Square on television at home in the suburbs.
"I threw on my coat and took the last metro to Maidan," he said.
Only Andriy and a handful of shivering protesters kept vigil on that first night of Nov. 21. But within days they were joined by half a million banner-waving Ukrainians, screaming for the presidential election that had awarded victory to then prime minister Viktor Yanukovich to be overturned.
"We wanted to live in a new democratic country without corruption and vote fraud," Andriy said.
For weeks the "orange revolution" dominated headlines across the world. In the end it swept Yushchenko, a pro-Western reformer, to the presidency.
Yet, one year on, the euphoria of that people-power victory has transformed into bitter disappointment. An opinion poll this week indicated that 57 percent of Ukrainians think the orange promises have been broken.
"It turned out our new leaders acted the same old way as their predecessors," Andriy says.
For two-and-a-half months, he and thousands of others camped out in Kiev, refusing to accept Yanukovich's victory after monitors reported gross election fraud. Dressed in the orange of Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party, they cheered speeches by his charismatic ally Yulia Timoshenko, whose striking looks and traditional peasant braid made her the icon of the revolution.
The protesters were caked in grime, often cold and hungry, but their leaders buoyed them up with vows to sweep away the hardline regime of outgoing president and Soviet throwback Leonid Kuchma.
"There was a great sense of brotherhood and hope," Andriy recalls.
Yushchenko's victory sent his supporters home in rude spirits. But with revolutionary fervor seeping away, economic growth soon nosedived as arguments emerged between the orange leaders over the country's course.
The pro-Russian south and east of the country, which supported Yanukovich, retreated from threats to secede but claims of persecution persisted. And in September the fragile unity of Yushchenko's team was finally exploded when his chief of staff resigned, accusing key figures of corruption.
The allegations prompted two other high-ranking politicians to resign before the president stepped in to dismiss his prime minister, Timoshenko, and her entire government. It emerged that she had been locked in a battle for influence with her one-time rival for the premiership, Petro Poroshenko, the head of the national defense and security council. Furious, Timoshenko responded to her sacking by accusing the president of "ruining our public unity" and promising to lead her parliamentary bloc in elections next March.
Maidan veterans have been bewildered at the split between stars of the protests, whose enmities are such that they have refused to stand together on stage during anniversary celebrations last Tuesday.
Oksana Potapenko, 25, who helped coordinate supplies to the tent city, says: "A lot of people think Yushchenko treated Timoshenko very shabbily. He's not a messiah anymore."
The president angered his supporters further when he signed a controversial memorandum -- giving, among other concessions, immunity from prosecution to local councilors -- with his former arch-foe, the pro-Russian Yanukovich.
"You could call that agreement many things and betrayal is one of them," says Andriy Bondarenko, 34, an activist who pitched the first tent on Kiev's central street, Khreshchatyk.
"We expected the bandits who led the election fraud would be put behind bars but that didn't happen because of political deals behind the scenes," he said.
Claims that Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky funded the orange camp were another blow. And Yushchenko was forced to apologize for calling a journalist an "information killer" for exposing the lavish lifestyle of the president's 19-year-old son. In all, the scandals have put a big dent in Yushchenko's popularity. A poll published last week showed support for his actions have plunged to 33 percent, down from 48 percent in February.
IDENTITY: A sex extortion scandal involving Thai monks has deeply shaken public trust in the clergy, with 11 monks implicated in financial misconduct Reverence for the saffron-robed Buddhist monkhood is deeply woven into Thai society, but a sex extortion scandal has besmirched the clergy and left the devout questioning their faith. Thai police this week arrested a woman accused of bedding at least 11 monks in breach of their vows of celibacy, before blackmailing them with thousands of secretly taken photos of their trysts. The monks are said to have paid nearly US$12 million, funneled out of their monasteries, funded by donations from laypeople hoping to increase their merit and prospects for reincarnation. The scandal provoked outrage over hypocrisy in the monkhood, concern that their status
The United States Federal Communications Commission said on Wednesday it plans to adopt rules to bar companies from connecting undersea submarine communication cables to the US that include Chinese technology or equipment. “We have seen submarine cable infrastructure threatened in recent years by foreign adversaries, like China,” FCC Chair Brendan Carr said in a statement. “We are therefore taking action here to guard our submarine cables against foreign adversary ownership, and access as well as cyber and physical threats.” The United States has for years expressed concerns about China’s role in handling network traffic and the potential for espionage. The U.S. has
A disillusioned Japanese electorate feeling the economic pinch goes to the polls today, as a right-wing party promoting a “Japanese first” agenda gains popularity, with fears over foreigners becoming a major election issue. Birthed on YouTube during the COVID-19 pandemic, spreading conspiracy theories about vaccinations and a cabal of global elites, the Sanseito Party has widened its appeal ahead of today’s upper house vote — railing against immigration and dragging rhetoric that was once confined to Japan’s political fringes into the mainstream. Polls show the party might only secure 10 to 15 of the 125 seats up for grabs, but it is
The US Department of Education on Tuesday said it opened a foreign funding investigation into the University of Michigan (UM) while alleging it found “inaccurate and incomplete disclosures” in a review of the university’s foreign reports, after two Chinese scientists linked to the school were separately charged with smuggling biological materials into the US. As part of the investigation, the department asked the university to share, within 30 days, tax records related to foreign funding, a list of foreign gifts, grants and contracts with any foreign source, and other documents, the department said in a statement and in a letter to