Two weeks before Ukraine's pivotal 2004 presidential election, 22-year-old filmmaker Iryna Tsilyk found herself at the center of a heated exchange during a trip to Moscow. The upcoming elections were a topic of group conversation and one Russian woman, bristling with anger, demanded, “How dare you Ukrainians think you are independent?”
“It was the first time in my life that I realized how much some Russians really hate the idea that we Ukrainians live in an independent country,” Tsilyk told the Kyiv Independent.
That animosity toward Ukrainian sovereignty would later come to manifest itself in the election results. Pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych was declared the winner over the pro-Western reformer Viktor Yushchenko in the Nov. 21, 2004 runoff, following widespread documented voter intimidation and electoral fraud.
Outraged by the stolen election, Tsilyk and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians poured into the streets of Kyiv on the day after the election, demanding justice and a return to democratic principles.
The Orange Revolution — a two-month wave of peaceful protests, strikes, and sit-ins centered in Kyiv — ultimately forced a new vote. Yushchenko triumphed, signaling a victory for Ukraine’s democratic aspirations.
“It was a turning point when Ukrainians, myself included, understood that if we are united, we have the power to bring about positive change in our country,” Tsilyk said.
Twenty years after the Orange Revolution, as Ukrainians continue to resist Russia’s full-scale war of aggression, many are looking back on the anniversary of that uprising as the first battle in their enduring fight for the nation’s independence.
Smear campaigns, poisoning, voter intimidation
The 2004 presidential election that sparked the Orange Revolution was perhaps the most heated election in Ukraine’s recent history.
Sitting President Leonid Kuchma, whose time in office had been overshadowed by a high level of corruption and events like the brutal murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze, threw his support behind Yanukovych’s candidacy as a continuation of the status quo.
A wave of televised political smear campaigns attempting to portray Yushchenko as a fascist, coupled with his shocking poisoning in September 2004, defined the fraught lead-up to the initial vote. For many Ukrainians, all this underscored the high stakes of the election.
Six weeks before the election, Yanukovych updated his campaign platform to include proposals for dual citizenship, elevating Russian to the status of a second state language, and rejecting NATO membership.
On top of that, Russian leader Vladimir Putin arrived in Kyiv under the pretense of celebrating the anniversary of Ukraine’s Soviet liberation from the Nazis on Oct. 28, but it soon became clear that he had other intentions, as he made a return visit leading up to the runoff vote.
Appearing on Ukrainian national television, Putin tried to make it appear that he had no preferred candidate. He talked about how much he liked the Ukrainian language, poorly recited lines from 19th century national poet Taras Shevchenko’s pivotal work “Kobzar,” and told Ukrainians to “vote for the candidate they liked.” But it was clear that Moscow favored Yanukovych as the next president of Ukraine, and the Yushchenko campaign publicly accused Putin of foreign election interference.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, English teacher and interpreter Hennadii Tsupin recalled seeing people putting up posters with Yushchenko sporting a Hitler mustache as well as posters of Ukraine divided between East and West.
“We could also see that the nomenklatura — employees of the state — were ordered to support Yanukovych. Teachers and doctors, because they are paid by the state budget, were forced to attend meetings in support of Yanukovych. Workers of the state-owned enterprises, too,” Tsupin said.
When Yushchenko had come earlier in 2004 to visit Kharkiv with the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, some pro-Yanukovych agitators were waving the Russian flag and shouting angrily at Yushchenko supporters. The police had to separate them, and there was “a lot of passion and anger in the air.”
Tsupin didn't consider himself an active participant in the Orange Revolution when it started, as he remained in Kharkiv, but he did his part to be an informed citizen during the election. He tied an orange ribbon to his Lada, the color of Yushchenko’s campaign. He also went to Yushchenko’s campaign headquarters and got some campaign stickers to distribute around the city.
“Because I am 1.90 meters (6 foot 2) I could stick them quite high up on metal posts, out of reach of Yushchenko haters,” he recalled.
When Yanukovych garnered 39.3% of the vote and Yushchenko 39.8%, the run-off vote was triggered, as presidential candidates needed to secure more than 50% of the vote to win.
Journalist Olga Tokariuk was a 19-year-old university student in Kyiv during the 2004 election when she and three of her friends volunteered to work as election observers on behalf of Yushchenko’s campaign during the Nov. 21 runoff vote. When asked where they would prefer to serve, their answer was simple: "Anywhere." They were sent to Luhansk Oblast, having been told that "nobody wanted to go there."
The group arrived in Stanytsia Luhanska, a town that is under Russian occupation today. Tokariuk recalled how local residents were kind toward the outsiders and engaged in conversation with them in Ukrainian.
At the polling station, Tokariuk witnessed firsthand how pro-Yanukovych people were trying to stuff the ballots. Election observers in support of Yanukovych’s campaign also forced out pro-Yushchenko observers across numerous polling stations, Tokariuk among them, so they couldn’t register any violations.
“It was really shocking how well-coordinated it all was,” she told the Kyiv Independent. “Almost all of our observers were expelled.”
“Some of them were even taken to the forests with a sack put over their heads, intimidated, threatened with automatic weapons. Those elections were absolutely not free and transparent. We saw it with our own eyes.”
Returning from Luhansk to Kyiv after observing the election fraud and voter intimidation in the runoff, Tokariuk and other election observers discussed their concerns over the experience. Exit polls suggested that Yushchenko had secured 52% of the run-off vote and Yanukovych only 43%, but the next morning, the Central Election Commission declared Yanukovych the winner by 2.5%.
“We decided that we had to do something,” Tokariuk said. “We soon learned that a lot of people had the same idea.”
Introducing official
merch from the Kyiv Independent
‘I knew I had to be there’
An estimated 500,000 people gathered in central Kyiv in the days following the election results, many coming from cities across Ukraine to take part in the Orange Revolution.
"On the first day after the victory was declared for Yanukovych, I knew that I had to be there,” said Khrystia Vengryniuk, who was a 17-year-old university student in the western city of Chernivtsi. Like many of her fellow Ukrainians, she understood that the election results had been rigged.
"I told my classmates that all of us needed to be there, not in class, because our future depended on it,” she said. “There were a few other like-minded students in my group, and we stood on the central square in Chernivtsi. Later, we traveled to Kyiv to join (other protesters on) the Maidan."
Vengryniuk had only brought her autumn coat with her to Kyiv but she was determined to stand on the central square day and night despite the cold.
“I had to fight for what I believed in,” she said. “It felt like everything in Ukraine would finally be okay, that we were breaking away from Russia for good.”
Tsilyk and her friends also took part in the Orange Revolution from the very first days.
"It felt like everything in Ukraine would finally be okay, that we were breaking away from Russia for good."
“We got creative coordinating orange in our outfits,” Tsilyk said, referring to the color of Yushchenko’s campaign that later came to symbolize the revolution. The streets of Kyiv were a sea of orange.
“The entire atmosphere was vibrant and festive — people were singing and chanting pro-Yushchenko slogans.”
Despite the frigid weather and the high stakes of the protests, many Ukrainians remember the Orange Revolution as a largely peaceful, even celebratory moment. In stark contrast to the EuroMaidan Revolution, also known as Revolution of Dignity, a decade later, which saw over 100 protesters killed by the security forces of then-President Yanukovych, the Orange Revolution remained remarkably nonviolent.
“The biggest difference between the Orange Revolution and the Revolution of Dignity was that we actually felt safe,” Tsilyk said. “I don’t recall ever feeling a sense of impending danger during that time.”
Many protesters also looked for ways to use their skills to support the revolution. As a journalism student, Tokariuk helped deliver a newspaper produced three times a day for the demonstrators who had gathered from all over the country. With no social media and few smartphones at the time, providing access to reliable information was essential.
“I was shouting, ‘Latest news! Latest news!’ just like how newspapers were delivered in the old days,” Tokariuk recalled.
“It felt incredible to be among the people, seeing how genuine our efforts were and how many had traveled from all over Ukraine to defend their choice (of Yushchenko). It was my first revolution. For many of us, it was our first experience of standing up for democracy.”
‘It made me a firm believer in democracy’
Ukraine's Supreme Court ruled on Dec. 3 that the election results could not be validated due to documented fraud, thereby annulling the results and triggering a second runoff vote. Under the watchful eye of both domestic and international election monitors, Ukrainians returned to the polls for a third time on Dec. 26.
The Central Election Committee announced that Yushchenko had earned 51.99% of the vote and Yanukovych 44.20%. Yushchenko's inauguration as president occurred on Jan. 23, 2005, marking the end of the Orange Revolution.
Vengryniuk recalled that the crowd was so massive at Yushchenko’s inauguration that she began to worry that she would be crushed. Her friend’s father helped move her through the swarms of people to a place where she could catch some air.
“Later, all of us — adults and university students who had come together — drank wine and pomegranate juice to regain our strength because the crowd had been so overwhelming,” she said.
Yushchenko would go on to face numerous challenges during his presidency, including infighting with political rivals and interference from powerful oligarchs whose influence he had hoped to subdue. The 2008 global financial crisis further compounded these setbacks in effective policy-making, as well as ongoing gas disputes with Russia, deepening his unpopularity among Ukrainians.
During this period, Yanukovych and his pro-Russian Party of Regions planned their political comeback.
“Unfortunately, Russian propaganda was incredibly strong back then, and people voted for Yanukovych the next time around. I still believe Yushchenko was a good president, though — second only to Petro Poroshenko,” Vengryniuk said.
Yanukovych won against Yushchenko’s prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko in the 2010 presidential election, and Ukrainians, as Vengryniuk lamented, “had no idea what Ukraine would still have to endure in the years to come.”
Nevertheless, the Orange Revolution served as a crucial moment of political awakening for those involved.
“The Orange Revolution helped me realize freedom and democracy are not free,” Tokariuk said. “They need to be protected and people need to defend their right to have free and fair elections.”
The success of the Orange Revolution also equipped many Ukrainians who participated with the resolve needed to face future challenges, including the Revolution of Dignity, the illegal annexation of Crimea, and the invasion of Donetsk and Luhansk a decade later, as well as Russia’s full-scale war that erupted in 2022.
“Back then, I was overcome by this beautiful feeling that I am Ukrainian and we Ukrainians can do anything,” Tsilyk said. “Facing even bigger challenges today, I still carry this feeling with me today.”
Sofiya Doig
Note from the author:
Hi, this is Kate Tsurkan, thanks for reading this article. It was really empowering to hear from Ukrainians about their political awakening two decades ago and how that moment of triumph helped them brace for the hard times that would later come. If you like reading about this sort of thing, please consider supporting The Kyiv Independent.
