Kiev, Ukraine (AP) — Oleksandr Donii was one of the leaders of a student-led protest against sovereignty and political reform in 1990, ahead of Ukraine. Declaration of Independence. He remembers thinking that the fight for autonomy would take decades.
Instead, he came much earlier than he had imagined. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine It quickly declared independence in 1991, and later held a referendum backed by over 90% of voters.
“I was preparing for prisons and labor camps, but I thought the struggle would last around 20-30 years,” Doni told The Associated Press.
Moscow grips endured after independence
The country marks 34 years since its monumental events on Sunday, so Doni and others, the first generation of Ukrainian lawmakers and activists, soviet unionMoscow grips endure. Russia They used political pressure, social division, and bystanders of Western voices. It finally paved the way A full-scale invasion of Ukraine Thirty years later, the current battle for Ukraine’s current independence and identity is facing offensive neighbours.
In 1990, Doni and other student leaders on the hunger strike were calling for not only to break away from Moscow, but also to update the political system at home.
Their first proposal was to hold a snap election for the Ukrainian Parliament. He thought this was essential to clearing up Soviet-era lawmakers, where Donnis still took office. However, this idea did not gain widespread support even among independent forces.
“Ukraine, which gained independence, did not win the removal of the communist ruling class,” he said.
In his view, the opportunity reached in the early 1990s slipped off, and Ukraine ended up paying a higher price today when pressing towards today european union and NATO Not as a distant desire, but as an urgent necessity to protect sovereignty and ensure an independent path.
Oleksandr Nechyporenko, the first Ukrainian parliament member, remembers how fragmented society was on the crisis of independence.
“A very big part was neutral. It included people who were shaking and not well-informed,” he recalls. “We also had a decisive and strong core in favor of maintaining the Soviet Union, communist rule, relations with Russia, and more.” Nechyporenko says there were only a few “passionate change makers.”
“We should have been more solid.”
In his view, Ukraine’s tolerance towards Russian influence agents was a major mistake from the early days of its independence. “We should have been more solid and more radical,” he said.
The sense of missed resolve is not limited to politics. As Ukraine fights for survival with Russia, decisions made in the early years of independence continue to be heavy. One of the most consequential was the choice to abandon the vast nuclear weapons left in Ukrainian soils after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Yurii Kostenko, a scholar and politician who led negotiations on Ukraine’s nuclear military extraction in the early 1990s, said:
He says his vision of nuclear disarmament included the US financially and technical support of Ukraine to turn nuclear warheads into fuel for nuclear power plants while leading the negotiation process. Subscribing to NATO would have been a security guarantee in Ukraine. The US was ready to do that, Costenco said.
A contract to grant Russia a nuclear warhead
But instead of working with the US, Kostenko recalls that Ukraine was eventually pressured by Russia to abandon its warhead, receiving little in return. To achieve this, then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin demanded that Kostenko be fired as the leader of the negotiations by then-President Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine. The demand was recognized.
The Ukrainian delegation, although no longer led by Kostenko, dropped the original code-signed plan with the United States and chose to work with Russia instead. According to Kostenko, Ukraine received $1.5 billion in nuclear fuel and natural gas from Russia in exchange for its nuclear weapons.
In lieu of joining NATO, Ukraine received the Budapest Memorandum. This is an agreement in which Ukraine has been granted guarantees of sovereignty and territorial integrity from the United States, Britain and Russia. For many Ukrainians, it has become a symbol of a promise that has no weight. Moscow first shredded annexation and contracts Crimea With a full-scale invasion in 2014 and then in 2022, 30 years later, Ukraine once again negotiated its future with its western partners under the shadow of Russian attacks, so the choices and compromises of the 1990s are still massive and shaping a permanent quest for security.
