Ukraine is marking the 10th anniversary of the shooting of dozens of protesters in Kyiv during the Maidan Revolution, which toppled the country’s Moscow-backed president Viktor Yanukovych and led to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and a pro-Russian separatist movement in the east. FRANCE 24’s Gulliver Cragg spoke with Denys Tarakhkotelik, a protest leader during the revolution who runs Yanukovych’s former estate as a park and museum, and activist Oleh Symoroz about how Ukraine is tackling corruption a decade after Maidan.
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Tarakhkotelik is not impressed with Ukraine’s effort to tackle corruption. “The sums involved are not as large as during Yanukovych’s time, but to be honest, if you look at the recent case of embezzlement from the defence ministry, to me that’s an even worse crime because now we’re at war.”
Symoroz is also concerned about corruption in Ukraine. But he doesn’t feel that the Maidan Revolution was a failure. “We chose freedom of speech, we prevented our country from being turned into another Belarus or Russia. We see how all opposition there were shut down. We’re still able to speak out when things go wrong.”
Amid Russia’s heightened offensive in Ukraine’s east and south, President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a message on Facebook on Tuesday to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Maidan.
“It has been 10 years since the attempts to destroy us and our independence,” he said. “But we stood firm 10 years ago and continue to do so today.”Â
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This story originally appeared on France24
