Ukraine’s Orange Revolution was a series of protests, held mostly in Kyiv, that lasted from November 2004 to January 2005 as a response to election fraud.
After reports that the results of the Nov. 21, 2004, presidential election run-off between ex-Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko and then Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych had been rigged, favoring the latter, mass protests swelled in Kyiv’s downtown Independent Square as well as in other cities around the country.
Within days, an estimated 500,000 protestors gathered in downtown Kyiv, waving orange flags and wearing orange clothing, the chosen color of Yushchenko’s campaign and the subsequent revolution.
Shortly after the revolution began, a tent city appeared on Independence Square, known as Maidan. Ukrainian musicians performed and celebrities made appearances.
While riot police were deployed to Kyiv’s central streets, the protests were largely peaceful and the police didn’t use force.
In early December, Ukraine’s Supreme Court ruled that the level of fraud had rendered the election results null and void making it impossible to determine the winner, thus forcing a revote.
Yushchenko’s ultimate victory and inauguration the following January concluded the revolution.
Click on each of these pages to learn more about an aspect of this historic moments in the nation’s history 🙂
