On December 26, 2004, the former Communist state of Ukraine signalled a new era in Eastern European politics, and U of T students were there.

“It wasn’t about who would win; it was about everybody having their democratic rights,” said Alesia Kuchar, a U of T master’s student who went to Ukraine in late December as an international election observer.

In a furious campaign fraught with scandal, vote-rigging, a poisoning, and enough global media attention to fill every hotel in Kyiv (‘Kiev’ was the Russian spelling of the Ukrainian capital, which has changed back to its traditional Ukrainian spelling), Ukraine’s presidential candidates, Viktor Yanukovich and Viktor Yuschenko, fought over the future of this burgeoning democracy in what many observers saw as a contest between Russia-whose leaders vocally backed Yanukovich-and the West, which overwhelmingly favoured Yushchenko.

On November 21, 2004, after a widely contested election victory for Yanukovich, Yuschenko called on citizens to hit the streets to protest Yanukovich’s win, accusing the Kremlin-endorsed candidate of widespread election fraud.

Thousands of Ukrainians took up Yushchenko’s so-called “Orange Revolution” and peacefully protested against Yanukovich’s mandate to govern.

Within a week, and under intense global scrutiny, Ukraine’s supreme court declared the election invalid and ordered that a new one be held on December 26.

The election run-off garnered the interest of thousands of international observers who descended on Ukraine for the Boxing Day re-vote. Five hundred Canadian observers, led by former prime minister John Turner,went to Ukraine to monitor the elections and ensure a fair vote.

Kuchar went as part of the Canadian government’s group to the city of Cherkassy, about three hours south of Kyiv.

“The attitude that I came across was very positive,” Kuchar told The Varsity. “In Kyiv it was a movement and I don’t think it would’ve stopped until a change was created. There was a real pattern: people would get off work, go to the Independence Square, find out what was happening that day-it became a routine.”

“What we see now with this Revolution is a new democracy, and the Western observers have shown people that they have rights,” Kuchar said. She stressed that she and the rest of the Canadian observers were there to ensure the elections were conducted properly, not to support one candidate or another.

“[They] really need to make a lot of internal economic and political changes,” Kuchar said. “The EU has said this, and it will be easier for someone who is willing to make those changes.”

When asked what she thought Yuschenko’s victory would mean for the average Ukrainian, Kuchar said, “I think it’ll lessen the gap between rich and poor, generally speaking. It will decrease the shadow economy-at the very least, lessen that part of the economy.”

“It’ll definitely have a positive effect on people. With Yuschenko, it’ll progress from here on in-he seems genuine.”