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Protesters in Kiev Topple Lenin Statue as Rallies Grow Protesters in Kiev Topple Lenin Statue as Rallies Grow
(about 4 hours later)
KIEV, Ukraine — Protesters in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, toppled the city’s main statue of Lenin on Sunday and then pounded it into chips with a sledgehammer as a crowd chanted and cheered. The destruction of the statue was a cathartic moment in the biggest day of demonstrations so far against President Viktor F. Yanukovich’s turn away from Europe. KIEV, Ukraine — Public protests thundered into a full-throttle civil uprising in Ukraine on Sunday, as hundreds of thousands of protesters answered President Viktor F. Yanukovich’s dismissiveness with their biggest rally so far, demanding that he and his government resign.
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians filled the streets of Kiev on Sunday, first to hear speeches and music and then to fan out and erect barricades in the district where government institutions have their headquarters. At the height of the unrest Sunday night, a seething crowd toppled and smashed a statue of Lenin, the most prominent monument to the Communist leader in Kiev. The act was heavy with symbolism, underscoring the protesters’ rage at Russia over its role in the events that first prompted the protests: Mr. Yanukovich’s abrupt refusal to sign sweeping political and free-trade agreements with the European Union.
Carrying blue-and-yellow Ukrainian and European Union flags, the teeming crowd filled Independence Square, where protests have steadily gained momentum since Mr. Yanukovich refused on Nov. 21 to sign trade and political agreements with the European Union. The square has been transformed by a vast and growing tent encampment, and demonstrators have occupied City Hall and other public buildings nearby. Thousands more people gathered in other cities across the country. After an electrifying assembly in Independence Square in the center of Kiev, the main focus of the protests, the huge crowd surged across the capital, erecting barriers to block the streets around the presidential headquarters and pitching huge tents in strategic intersections. They were not challenged by the police, who have largely disengaged since their bloody crackdown on a group of protesters on Nov. 30 sharply increased outrage at the government.
“Resignation! Resignation!” people in the Kiev crowd chanted on Sunday, demanding that Mr. Yanukovich and the government led by Prime Minister Mykola Azarov leave office. International concern over the unrest in Ukraine appeared to deepen on Sunday, as the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, telephoned Mr. Yanukovich and Western leaders continued to call on him to respond to the demonstrators’ demands. The European Union has been eager to draw Ukraine, a nation of 46 million, into closer alliance with the West, while Russia has sought to safeguard its major economic and political interests in its close neighbor. Making the crisis more acute, Ukraine is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy and is desperate for financial assistance from abroad.
With the police nowhere to be seen in the city center, protesters in Bessarabia Square toppled the Lenin statue using steel cables and cranks as a crowd gathered to watch. “People were waiting for this for decades,” said one man in the crowd, Leon Belokur. “Now it’s happened.” The spreading disorder set off a new round of speculation that Mr. Yanukovich would declare a state of emergency and potentially turn again to force by ordering the removal of demonstrators who have occupied Independence Square and several public buildings, including Kiev’s City Hall. There were reports on Sunday that the security services were preparing to bring charges of treason against three opposition leaders in Parliament who have been at the forefront of the demonstrations.
He pulled from his pocket a chip of granite. “This is a piece of Lenin’s hand,” he said. One of those leaders, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, of the opposition Fatherland party, called for mass civil disobedience if Mr. Yanukovich tried to impose martial law. “In the case that a state of emergency is declared, everyone should go to Maidan,” Mr. Yastsenyuk said, referring to Independence Square.
Once the statue was down, men took turns smashing it with the sledgehammer. Onlookers chanted, “Glory to Ukraine!” and cheered the hammerers with cries of “Good job, guys!” as they shielded their faces from flying splinters of stone. One of the hammerers wore his hair in a Mohawk; another was a priest in black vestments. The protesters mounted a Ukrainian flag on the empty pedestal. Mr. Yanukovich only added to the demonstrators’ anger by stopping on his way back from China on Friday to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Sochi, the Russian resort city. Rumors immediately began swirling that Mr. Yanukovich had cut a secret economic deal with Mr. Putin that would lead to Ukraine joining a customs union with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, a step that many Ukrainians believe would deliver their country’s future into the Kremlin’s hands. Both governments denied the rumors, but the protesters do not trust either Mr. Putin or Mr. Yanukovich, and opposition leaders used the matter on Sunday to whip up the crowd in Kiev.
Many towns in Ukraine tore down statues of Lenin years ago, erasing monuments to the Soviet communism that had crushed their nation with famine, but the one in Kiev had stood intact until Sunday. “Today, they fall on their knees in front of the president of Russia and surrender us to the customs union,” said Oleg Tyagnibok, the leader of the nationalist Svoboda Party. “We demand to make public what these secret negotiations were about. They bring us back to the time of Stalinism. Is this 1937?”
The giant rally reflected just how deeply roiled this nation of 46 million people has become since Mr. Yanukovich reneged on more than a year of promises to complete the political and free-trade agreements with the European Union. Later, as the Lenin statue was pulled down and men took turns splintering it to bits with a sledgehammer, protesters twice sang the national anthem, removing their caps and covering their hearts with their hands. One of the hammerers wore his hair in a Mohawk; another was a priest in black vestments. Onlookers shielded their faces from the flying granite chips as they cheered them on, yelling: “Good job, guys.”
With Western governments urging a peaceful and lawful solution, but no indication of any possibility of a compromise, the continuing unrest seemed likely to confront Mr. Yanukovich with unpalatable choices, including a crackdown by security officers that many demonstrators say they fear but believe was inevitable. A spokesman for Prime Minister Mykola Azarov called the statue’s destruction “barbaric.”
The president could wait, hoping that increasingly cold weather and demoralization will eventually thin the crowds, but the continuing occupation of a large swath of the capital has already added a patina of weakness and indecision to the government’s growing unpopularity. Mr. Yanukovich’s decision not to sign the accords with the European Union, reversing more than a year of promises to complete them, touched off the protests on Nov. 21. But a series of other events have not only helped the protest leaders gather larger and larger crowds, but confounded Mr. Yanukovich’s efforts to tamp them down. The protest movement was injected with a new wave of popular fury after the police’s crackdown on a few hundred protesters on Nov. 30 — violence that was unheard-of even during the Orange Revolution protests of 2004.
Heightening the tension is a severe and urgent economic crisis, along with Ukraine’s need to secure a financial aid package worth $18 billion or more. At the moment, that help seems most likely to come from Russia, but any agreement with the Kremlin is likely to spur further public fury. Mr. Yanukovich “thinks that we will disperse — he thinks we will give up,” Mr. Yatsenyuk told the crowd on Sunday. “Every day, we broaden our protest. Starting from today, we completely picket the whole governmental quarter. Starting from tomorrow, we wait for a concrete response; we wait for a specific action. And every day we will picket one more governmental institution — ministries, tax office, any state bodies. We broaden our protest. We go towards our victory.”
Many Ukrainians view the accords with the European Union as crucial to a brighter future, with Western-style rule of law that could combat what many view as deeply entrenched public corruption and cronyism among the country’s wealthy elite. They also see the agreements as eventually offering better economic opportunities. Support for Mr. Yanukovich and the government among his usual allies did appear to be weakening. Some of the wealthy businessmen who control Ukrainian television channels have allowed them to broadcast full unfettered coverage of the protests, which has made the crowds larger still. So has aggressive organizing on social media by protest leaders.
The accords were also viewed as a way to break free of the grip of Russia, which nearly a quarter-century after the collapse of the Soviet Union continues to exert heavy sway here, including complete control over Ukraine’s crucial natural gas supply. The government seems to have been caught flat-footed. Mr. Yanukovich appeared to hope that the protests would fizzle if he dismissed them as the work of his political opponents; instead, protesters have called all the louder for his resignation, saying he is aloof and unresponsive.
Mr. Yanukovich’s comments that in retreating from Europe, he planned to restore relations with Russia — where he met on Friday with President Vladimir V. Putin — have only further inflamed the crowds. “He hasn’t been seen, and he acts as if nothing is happening, that these are not his people and this is not his country,” said Oksana Syrota, 20, a university student who was demonstrating in Kiev on Sunday, wearing a Ukrainian flag around her shoulders. “Every country should live by the law, and we won’t break the law, but we want the police and the government to pay attention to the people and come over to our side. They are fighting their own people.”
On Sunday, the sky over Kiev was gray, but temperatures were comfortably above freezing. Svitlana Zalishchuk, one of a small coalition of civic organizers who have been leading the protests from behind the scenes, said: “I think the people have dignity. This is why they are here. Not because they are against Yanukovich, not because they are for the European Union, but because they have dignity and they want to live with dignity.”
The demonstrators were old and young and middle-aged, from Lviv in the west to Odessa in the south, and from Dnipropetrovsk in the east to the country’s heart, Kiev itself. Parents held children onto their shoulders, students wore blue-and-yellow striped face paint, and volunteers handed out steaming cups of tea and other refreshments. They sang the national anthem and were blessed from the stage by representatives of all of branches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, save for the Moscow Patriarchate, which is loyal to Russia. The protesters have transformed Independence Square over the past week by erecting a vast and growing tent encampment. The teeming crowds on Sunday included parents with children on their shoulders, students wearing face paint in the blue and yellow of the national flag, and volunteers handed out steaming cups of tea and other refreshments. Representatives of all branches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church blessed them from the stage, except for the Moscow Patriarchate, which is loyal to Russia.
“I think the people have dignity,” said Svitlana Zalishchuk, one of a small coalition of civic organizers who have been leading the protest movement from behind the scenes. “This is why they are here: not because they are against Yanukovich, not because they are for the European Union, but because they have dignity, and they want to live with dignity.” Many protesters on Sunday said it was the police violence, even more than the reversal on the European accords, that angered them. “We are not a political family,” said Oleksandr Ruchko, a computer programmer who was with his wife, Olena. “But the shove from the government, when they beat students and innocent people, that really drove us to come out..”
The protest movement accelerated drastically after a violent and ill-conceived crackdown by the riot police on a small group of demonstrators more than a week ago. Scenes of young protesters being beaten and bloodied with truncheons, some as they lay on the ground offering no resistance, enraged a country that views itself as inherently peaceful. “The question of Europe doesn’t motivate everybody,” he said. “We hope the people will be heard, and the government will resign.”
Many commentators noted that there had been no such violent outbreak during the Orange Revolution of 2004, when hundreds of thousands of people similarly took to the streets to protest, and ultimately reverse, the results of a fraudulent presidential election. By early evening, protesters were moving unchallenged through downtown Kiev to set up improvised barricades. On one picturesque cobblestone street lined with boutiques near the presidential administration building, four teenage boys tipped a bulky green trash container end over end. Men wheeled large concrete planters in the shape of urns along the sidewalk. Curbstones were piled to form a base; a short wrought-iron fence torn from a park formed a lattice. Some of the men added wooden planks with nails sticking out.
Indeed, many protesters on Sunday said it was that display of violence, more than the rejection of the accords with Europe, that had motivated them to protest. A man in a black-and-white-striped balaclava braced a slab of particle board with one urn, then stepped back to appraise his work approvingly.
“If the people really want, they can take power in their hands,” said Oksana Syrota, 20, a university student wearing a Ukrainian flag around her shoulders. “We are the power; we are the government.” “We will barricade the president’s administration,” said Vitali Fedotov, a City Council member from Chernigov, resting beside a stack of tent poles and a roll of canvas he had just carried. “We’re going to move in here.”
Mr. Yanukovich, who insists that he is acting in the best economic interests of Ukraine, has been planning to seek re-election for another five-year term in 2015, but seems to face an increasingly uphill battle. Brushing aside the initial demonstrations, he issued terse criticism of the police violence, but promptly left Ukraine for a state visit to China, followed by a stop in Russia to visit with Mr. Putin. In both cases, he seemed to be seeking economic assistance. At Mariinsky Park near Parliament, riot police officers formed a protective ring around a pro-government rally of several thousand people. The counterprotest was meant to resemble the much larger antigovernment demonstrations, though with a bigger stage and a better light and sound system.
Yuri V. Lutsenko, a former interior minister and Orange Revolution leader who is helping to coordinate the current protests, told the crowd that the country would be better off without Mr. Yanukovich. “When some say the father won’t leave his children alone,” Mr. Lutsenko said, “it’s better to be an orphan than to have such a father.” “We support the legitimate authorities,” said Serhiy Movchan, 28, who was standing near the rally’s sole entrance and insisted that reporters interview him first. “I am a Kievan, and I don’t like people come to Kiev and making a garbage bin out of it.”
In a speech to the crowd, Vitali Klitschko, the champion boxer who leads the opposition Udar party, recounted the demands of protest leaders, including the dismissal of Mr. Azarov and the government, followed by new elections, the release of more than a dozen protesters who had been arrested in recent days and punishment for police officials responsible for the violence. Mr. Movchan defended Mr. Yanukovich’s decision to back away from the accords with Europe, saying it was unclear how much pressure Russia would apply if they had been signed. “Putin pressed our economy, and we started losing a lot,” Mr. Movchan said. “We didn’t go out of Europe. We just suspended it.”
“We announced an ultimatum to the president of Ukraine,” Mr. Klitschko said. “We demand the freeing of political prisoners and punishment of those who gave orders and beat them.”

Oksana Lyachnyska contributed reporting.

“We call for a strike,” he added. “I am convinced we can press the authorities, peacefully, and win.”
Oleg Tyagnibok, the leader of the nationalist Svoboda party, denounced the government, and repeated a widespread belief among demonstrators that Mr. Yanukovich was negotiating with Mr. Putin over joining the regional trade bloc that the Kremlin has been pushing as an alternative to Ukraine’s forging closer ties with Europe.
“Today, they fall on their knees in front of the president of Russia and surrender us to the customs union,” Mr. Tyagnibok said. “We will struggle.”
He added: “We demand to make public what these secret negotiations were about. They bring us back to the time of Stalinism. Is this 1937?”
The Ukrainian and Russian governments have forcefully denied that there was even any discussion of the customs union between Mr. Yanukovich and Mr. Putin in Sochi on Friday. They say they were moving forward on other broad agreements involving trade and energy issues, but did not sign anything.
Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, the leader in Parliament of the opposition Fatherland party, said that only the demonstrations had prevented Mr. Yanukovich from signing an agreement to join the trading group, which would include Belarus and Kazakhstan. “Yanukovich was afraid to sign the agreement with Putin,” Mr. Yatsenyuk said.
Asked her view of the president, Ms. Syrota, the student, said: “He hasn’t been seen and he acts as if nothing is happening, that these are not his people and this is not his country. Every country should live by the law, and we won’t break the law, but we want to the police and the government to pay attention to the people and come over to our side.”
“They are fighting their own people,” she added. “It’s not logical, and the president should understand this.”
Ksenia Smernova, 26, a bartender living in Kiev, wore a plastic wreath shaped as black currants and wildflowers, which she said represented the forests of western Ukraine. Ms. Smernova said that she supported the European trade deal but came out to protest regularly only after the televised beatings by the riot police, called the Berkut.
“I came out on the 24th just to support this agreement, but then I started to come out to protest against Yanukovich and the government,” she said.
Oleksandr Ruchko, a computer programmer who was attending the rally with his wife, Olena, said he wanted to be clear that they were usually not politically active. But he said on Sunday that they were making an exception after the government “beat students and innocent people.”
“The question of Europe doesn’t motivate everybody.” Mr. Ruchko said. “We hope the people will be heard and the government will resign.”