By Askold Lozynskyj
The people of Ukraine are the best. I was about to say that Ukrainian democracy is the strongest in the world, but then someone may pounce and suggest that I am unreasonably biased because I am Ukrainian, I know, however, of no people who have manifested so often their will to live in freedom and democracy.
In 2004 the people of Ukraine voted for a new president. The election was clearly stolen. The people did not simply abide by the steal. They took to the streets overnight and staged a massive revolution referred to as the Orange Revolution. The revolution lasted approximately one month and it accomplished its purpose. The sitting president of Ukraine who had brought the stealing candidate onto the political scene initially as Prime Minister and was probably complicit in the attempted steal had no choice but to relent and was compelled to call a second election. Now the people expressed their will a second time and with the eyes of the entire world focused on Ukraine’s election, this time the people prevailed and their candidate was elected..
In 2013 the sitting president of Ukraine, unfortunately a Russian puppet, announced to the world that Ukraine would not be joining the European Union. According to almost every major poll this contravened the will of the people and so the People arose once again. The president attempted to quell the uprising by force. People were physically hurt. That resulted in demands for the President’s ouster. This Revolution of Dignity proceeded for three months with at least 100 lives lost. Finally the president was forced to flee the country. Where? To Russia. The People prevailed.
And now more than eleven years into a war for the existence of Ukraine as a country, Ukrainians as a people and democracy as a way of life for God knows how many other countries and peoples, the People of Ukraine manifested an undaunted will that could not be overcome. The President of Ukraine by all accounts, a good and just man, yet clearly stressed out by more than three years of a war on all fronts, and certainly, concerned with traitors and infiltrators within, took upon himself the unenviable duty to strengthen his control over the levers of government, lest the enemy get the upper hand within the government of Ukraine itself.
I believe that in good faith and aimed at protecting the branches of government and the state during war time, he initiated and his party passed in the Parliament of Ukraine a law making all branches of government subject to the control of people whom he could trust. Except that Ukraine as any truly democratic state belongs not to the President, his people or any branch of government but to the People themselves.
A democracy is predicated on the will of the People and the state exists solely for the purpose of serving the People. Any misuse of state power for personal enrichment by government personnel cannot be tolerated and must be prosecuted to the furthest extent of the law. Otherwise there is no rule of law, equal treatment of People under the law and no democracy, but an oligarchy. The president himself is not above the law.
Well the President of Ukraine had to be reminded that a democracy is the rule of the People and that is what the People of Ukraine did. They took to the streets on their own. It was a spontaneous demonstration by the People of Ukraine that they would not stand for anything less than a democracy that is ruled by the will of the People. The President did not attempt to oppose the will of the people. Two days after the antidemocratic bill passed in the parliament and was signed into law by the President, that same President submitted to parliament a draft bill of a new law that would undo what the prior law was meant to do.
This was a tremendous victory not only for Ukraine and Democracy. It was a teaching moment for leaders of democratic states everywhere in the world, that they may be presidents, but not kings, and their duty is to serve the people that elected them and those who did not.
Congratulations to the People of Ukraine as well as the President of Ukraine. As an American citizen I can think of at least one President who can learn much from this experience. But in order to learn you must understand democracy and be willing to serve.
June 25, 2025