Kyiv’s Mayor-Elect Klitschko Reverses Call to Quit Maidan Protest Camp
By Paul Sonne
KYIV–Champion boxer and Kyiv mayor-elect Vitali Klitschko took to the square that became the epicenter of Ukraine’s protest movement, seeking to placate restive demonstrators who have pushed back against suggestions their barricades come down.
Speaking to protesters and passersby on Sunday, Mr. Klitschko promised not to disperse the pro-Europe protest camp on Kyiv’s Independence Square, retreating from his call a week before that activists leave and begin returning the capital to normal life. Protesters had responded to the earlier suggestion in anger, some burning tires on square, commonly known as the Maidan.
The controversy over the future of the Maidan–which is now part active protest site, part makeshift memorial to protesters who died in clashes with police–shows the difficulty Mr. Klitschko faces in satisfying the disparate groups who set up camp there in November.
It also highlights the mistrust many Ukrainians continue to feel toward government leaders, despite May 25 elections that ushered supporters of the protest movement, including Mr. Klitschko, into the government. Many Maidan supporters want the protest camp to stay as a reminder to the new leaders and a method to keep them in check.
“It’s Maidan control,” said Volodymyr Mykhailov, a 61-year-old member of the camp’s so-called self-defense troops. “I don’t listen much to Klitschko. I listen to the people.”
Mr. Klitscho joined the protest movement that toppled Kremlin-friendly former President Viktor Yanukovych in February. His appearance on Sunday came a week after he caused a stir among the lingering protesters by suggesting the Maidan camp should be dismantled because the movement had won.
“I am absolutely sure the Maidan’s key goal has been fulfilled,” the boxer-turned-politician said on May 26, a day after the election. “Today we have rid ourselves of a dictator.”
Mr. Klitschko said the barricades should come down and traffic should be resumed on the neighboring tent-covered boulevard. He also said a memorial should be established for those who were killed. “The city of Kyiv should gradually return to normal, day-to-day life,” he declared.
On Sunday, though, Mr. Klitschko said the square’s various protest groups should decide its fate.
“I want to underscore: I never supported the use of force against the Maidan and always defended it–both under Yanukovych and today,” Mr. Klitschko said, according to the Interfax news agency.
Maidan has undergone a transformation in recent months. What emerged late last year as a vibrant city within a city, where thousands of Ukrainians joined forces in the freezing cold to oust Mr. Yanukovych–cooking and singing and patrolling through the night–has become a grim scene since the president fled the capital.
The building that once bustled as the protest movement’s headquarters remains a burnt-out shell. Flowers are heaped where protesters died, alongside candles and photos of the deceased. Some self-defense volunteers and far-right activists hang around and smoke cigarettes, as vendors sell souvenirs and cotton candy to passersby.
By and large, the encampment’s lifeblood has seeped away. The stage is usually empty, its one-time chief entertainment coordinator now tending to his duties as Ukraine’s new culture minister. The students and politicians have largely departed. Many fighters have taken off to the conflict in the country’s east. Some Ukrainians now complain the square has become a stamping ground for panhandlers and drunks.
“Maidan shouldn’t stay in this condition,” said Artyom Taraschuk, a 23-year-old from the northwestern Ukrainian city of Lutsk. “We look at all of this as some kind of freak show.” He said he was training to go to Ukraine’s east with a far-right paramilitary squad to fight pro-Russia separatists.
Still, many activists say the camp must remain until all its demands are met, including necessary government reforms that have yet to pass. A federation of protest groups released a manifesto in response to the mayor-elect saying politicians would never succeed in dismantling the Maidan. They admitted the square had fallen into a less-than-respectful state at times.
“[W]e call upon politicians, diplomats and other government officials to join us in developing a Ukrainian memorial space,” they said. The groups suggested holding an architectural contest to overhaul the square into a joint memorial and civic center.”Politicians were not the ones to start the Maidan,” they wrote. “And they will not be ones to disperse it!”
Write to Paul Sonne at paul.sonne@wsj.com