The long-running opposition protests on Kiev’s central Independence Square are becoming a “school for revolution” as the country’s leaders lose touch with society, top Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov said.
The 52-year-old is one of the most-read authors of the former Soviet Union, with his satirical Russian-language novels, notably Death and the Penguin, translated into many languages.
He said he regularly goes to Independence Square, known as the Maidan, which protesters have occupied since Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in November last year scrapped a rapprochement with the EU under pressure from Russia.
“The Maidan is a school for revolution. There are a lot of crazy people and colorful characters here, but there are also plenty of people who are consolidating their activism,” he said.
Kurkov was also a firm supporter of the 2004 Orange Revolution, which took place on the Maidan. The protest led to a rerun of rigged polls claimed by Yanukovych, bringing pro-Western opposition leaders to power.
The writer’s involvement in the Orange Revolution prompted a dramatic fall in the print runs of his books in Russia.
Kurkov, who has a British wife and three children, is known for his darkly comic style. The hero of Death and the Penguin writes obituaries in advance for a local newspaper, only to find his subjects rapidly meeting premature ends.
Kurkov was on the jury of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize that picked Canadian short story author Alice Munro.
In 2010, when Yanukovych came to power amid disillusionment with the squabbling Orange Revolution leaders, Kurkov said that in his view, one “can only know one Maidan in a lifetime.”
However, he said he has now completely changed his mind, and believes there could be a “third Maidan, then a fourth and so on.”
This form of protest “is now rooted in the consciousness of the people,” he said.
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have taken to the street in the latest protests, particularly after Ukrainian riot police violently dispersed activists, in what Kurkov called a “social explosion.”
The protests have “shown that half the country will never agree to live according to [the authorities’] principles,” he said.
Kurkov was deeply critical of the Ukrainian leadership, saying: “the behavior of Viktor Yanukovych and his allies is absolutely not in line with the times.”
“No Ukrainian politician has gathered so much hatred in the country or been so little respected abroad,” he said of Yanukovych.
For Yanukovych, receiving a US$15 billion bailout from Russia as a reward for scrapping the EU deal was a “very serious psychological defeat,” he said.
“From now on, he is dependent on the mood” of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the writer said.
Yanukovych has misjudged the strength of the pro-European mood in Ukraine, where civil society “has developed much more quickly than in Russia,” Kurkov said.
“Western Ukraine, on the border of Europe, has become virtually European, while eastern Ukraine is close to Russia, but has ceased to be part of Russia,” he said.
“It is only in Crimea [which became part of Soviet Ukraine in 1954] that the pro-Russian mood is still strong. In the Donbass [the Russian-speaking region that is Yanukovych’s heartland], no one wants to unite with Russia,” he said.
As for Yanukovych himself, he has “nothing in common with the European mindset,” Kurkov added.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion