Ukraine—Power and Protest Interplay Amidst Geopolitics

This chapter examines two major contentious episodes in post-transition Ukraine: the 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2013–2014 Euromaidan/Revolution of Dignity. I illustrate the interplay between power structures and protest dynamics by focusing on increased salience and transformation of a geopolitical orientation cleavage. Using a toolkit developed by the fields conceptual framework, I show how collective incumbents, challengers, and governance units interacted to alter the power balance within the broader Ukrainian political field. Following the fields approach, the analysis accounts for various collective actors, including activist initiatives and NGOs, counter-protesters, financial-industrial groups, law enforcement agencies, local self-governments, and courts. Among these, political parties deserve special attention, as they added street protests to their usual repertoire early on in Ukraine’s history and often assumed an identity of contentious actors since. This analysis also accounts for the role played by actors in proximate fields in influencing domestic contention. I underline the impact of exogenous shocks on the dynamics of domestic politics by outlining post-Euromaidan political developments, the emergence of a powerful volunteer movement and civic resistance, as Ukraine was hit by the 2014 Russian aggression, which escalated into a full-scale invasion in 2022.