How Ukraine Defied History

I still remember feeling a bit awed when I first arrived in Ukraine in 2002. I had already spent five years in the region, so I was no stranger to Eastern Europe or to post-communist societies. Yet Kyiv was different. It was much larger than other regional capitals, like Warsaw, Prague, or Budapest, and it carried an air of what felt like destiny.

Still, Ukraine was a cynical place. Corruption was endemic. There was little civic discourse, and almost no appetite for political or social mobilization. The prevailing attitude was, “Nothing will ever change, so why bother thinking about it? Just do your job, take care of your family, and maybe save enough for a decent vacation every now and then.”

Today, Ukraine has been utterly transformed to an extent very few thought possible. And it’s worth looking back to understand how it underwent such a profound shift. Because if change can happen in Ukraine, where everything once seemed so completely hopeless, then there is no limit to how we can impact the world. That is something truly worth exploring.

A Material Desire Emerges

It’s important to take into account the atmosphere in Ukraine when I arrived. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, foreign investment had poured into other Eastern European countries. NATO and European Union accession programs, which mandated strict reforms, had driven transitions  to democratic governance and market economies.

But lacking the enthusiasm for reform of the Baltic and Visegrad countries or the geopolitical cache of Moscow and Russia, Ukraine was left behind. Then, in the wake of the 1998 Ruble Crisis, the country defaulted on its debt, people’s savings were wiped out and the country was once again thrown into turmoil.

Hope began to emerge in the form of a staid central banker named Viktor Yushchenko, who quietly instituted technical reforms. Almost remarkably, hyperinflation ended and by 2000, the economy began to grow briskly. People could once again comfortably feed their families, have a night out with friends, and even go for some of those nice vacations.

Yet as Ukrainians emerged from the crises, it only became more clear how much they had been left behind by their neighbors to the west.  Their travel was mostly restricted to countries where they could get visas. Opportunities to study or do business abroad were limited. The Poles next door, who have deep historical ties to Ukrainians, were thriving. Why couldn’t Ukrainians have at least some of the same?

These feelings of yearning and frustration continued to build as the 2004 election approached and that unassuming central banker, Yushchenko, emerged as a leading candidate. If he could steer the economy out of such dire straits, why couldn’t he guide Ukraine into a better future? They didn’t necessarily want a radical break from the past, just an easier life and nicer things.

A Pivotal Moment

Unfortunately, Vladimir Putin had other plans. To him, Ukraine wasn’t a sovereign nation, but subservient to Russia. Yushchenko’s vision of a reformed, independent nation was a nonstarter. A few months before the November election, he had Yushchenko poisoned with dioxin. The attempt almost killed the presidential candidate and severely disfigured his face.

I remember how most people just assumed he wouldn’t continue. How could he campaign, with his body ravaged and his face looking like something out of a horror movie? But he didn’t quit. Instead, as soon as he was able to leave the hospital, he marched down to parliament and, in front of all the cameras, said:

“Look at my face. Listen to the way I speak. This is a small fraction of what I have suffered. Take a good hard look…so that the same thing does not happen to you.”

In that moment, that staid, boring central banker was transformed into inspirational figure. His courage united the country and helped Ukrainians believe that things could be different. People flocked to the polls. When the results were falsified in favor of the Russian-backed candidate, the almost comically thuggish Viktor Yanukovych, the Orange Revolution erupted.

I can still feel the chill, standing out in the streets during that freezing cold November. Nobody knew what would happen. What we feared most, I think, was the feeling of being utterly alone in the world, left abandoned as if our hopes and dreams didn’t matter. Yet everybody went, every day, because collectively Ukrainians decided that it was enough already. They wanted something different.

And luckily, we weren’t alone. Back then, the United States was still a beacon of freedom and the Bush administration, along with key European allies, supported Ukrainian aspirations. New elections were called and Yushenko was elected President. Seemingly against all odds, we had beaten the forces that would subjugate Ukraine.

We had won. Or… at least we thought we did.

Failure To Survive Victory

For the temerity of choosing their own president, Putin shut off the Ukrainians’ gas. Yushchenko’s presidency sputtered, and when the global financial crisis hit in 2008, his reformist agenda lost credibility. Viktor Yanukovych, the same man we had taken to the streets to keep out of power, won a legitimate election and took office.

He was even worse than we had feared. His presidency wasn’t so much a reign as it was an insatiable grab. He changed the constitution to seize more power and jailed his opponent, Yulia Tymoshenko, to cripple the opposition. His greed and self-enrichment, symbolized by his tastelessly extravagant Mezhyhirya estate, was obscene, even by Ukrainian standards.

By 2013, Viktor Yanukovych had consolidated political power and proved to be a model of avarice and incompetence. Corruption reached new heights. Experts estimate his regime looted as much as $100 billion—nearly equivalent to Ukraine’s entire GDP. Scandals, epitomized by the heinous case of Oksana Makar, began to pile up.

Things came to a head when Yanukovych backed out of a trade agreement with the EU. It was the final straw. It’s one thing to steal, to make a mockery of the rule of law, and to govern far below any reasonable standard of competence. But the prospect of EU integration had come to symbolize something greater: inclusion in Europe and the hope of living a normal life.

Once again, it was too much.

A Revolution Of Dignity 

When Yanukovych announced that he would not go through with the EU trade agreement, a young journalist and activist named Mustafa Nayem, was moved to post on Facebook, calling people to return to Independence Square, the scene of the Orange Revolution, commonly known as the Maidan:

Okay guys, let’s get serious. Who’s ready to go to the Maidan today at midnight? “Likes” will not be counted. Only comments under this post with the words “I’m ready.” Once there are more than a thousand, we will organize it.

Within an hour, there were more than 600 comments. Nayem posted again: they would meet at 10:30. Within hours, more than a thousand people showed up to protest. In the ensuing days, crowds swelled. First 10,000, then 50,000 and before long, the protesters had set up camps. They were in it for the long haul. The Euromaidan protests had begun.

The regime fought back, but to little avail. Riot police attacked, yet more people came to the Maidan. Yanukovych passed a law outlawing the protests and even more came. Things escalated. The regime started shooting the protestors. Soon there were Molotov cocktails, helmets, and improvised shields. In the end more than 100 people lay dead in the streets.

The world took notice and the diplomats came. Meanwhile, away from the cameras, meetings were held in Parliament. The President’s allies in the Party of Regions had enough and were ready to defect. The oligarchs, facing sanctions against their western assets, were through with him as well. Suddenly bereft of any support, Yanukovych fled from the country.

These events came to be known as the Revolution of Dignity, because it was the moment that the Ukrainian people demanded to have their sovereignty as an independent country recognized, no matter what the cost. That’s what led Putin to annex Crimea, invade Donbas in 2014 and then the entire country in 2022.

Showing The World What It Means To Be Ukrainian

My friend, the global activist Srdja Popović, once told me that the goal of a revolution should be to become mainstream, to be mundane and ordinary. If you are successful, it should be difficult to explain what was won because the previous order seems so unbelievable.

Those words were very much on my mind last week as I watched Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, flanked by top European leaders, at the White House. It’s getting harder to remember a time when Ukraine wasn’t admired around the world. It has come so far since I first arrived in Kyiv more than two decades ago, the past now feels almost like a mirage.

To be honest, I’m not sure anyone really knows how we got here. There were so many pivotal moments. What if Putin hadn’t poisoned Yushchenko in 2004? What if he had died or dropped out of the race? What if Putin hadn’t shut off the gas? Or derailed the EU trade agreement? What if, on the night of the full-scale invasion, Zelenskyy hadn’t stood with his ministers in Kyiv and used the camera on his smartphone to broadcast to the world, “I’m here”?

So many, “what ifs,” far too many to list. So many questions left unanswered, and so many genuinely unanswerable.

But I did get the answer to one question that had long been on my mind. At a small dinner I attended with Yushchenko and his wife last year, I asked him about that pivotal moment, when he left his hospital bed, body ravaged and face disfigured, marched down to Parliament and demanded, “Look at my face.”

I was sitting right across from him, just a few feet away, and he told me softly—as if the moment his courage inspired a nation and changed the course of history was just about the simplest thing in the world—“I just always believed in the Ukrainian spirit.”

It was a phrase he had used throughout the evening, not dramatically, but in passing, as if he were referring to an antique piece of furniture that had always been there, quietly waiting to be noticed. So maybe the simplest answer to the question of how truly transformational change can happen is that, first, someone has to believe in it.

Greg Satell is Co-Founder of ChangeOS, a transformation & change advisory, a lecturer at Wharton, an international keynote speaker, host of the Changemaker Mindset podcast, bestselling author of Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change and Mapping Innovation, as well as over 50 articles in Harvard Business Review. You can learn more about Greg on his website, GregSatell.com, follow him on Twitter @DigitalTonto, watch his YouTube Channel and connect on LinkedIn.

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