Difficult Solutions for Difficult Times

The tug of war between Ukrainians loyal to Russia as opposed to those anxious to rid the country of any potential for ongoing reliance on an economic union with Russia reflecting their past connection in the Soviet Union has led to massive protests with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians shouting their contempt for President Viktor Yanukovych.

That tug of war led to an alternating administration between Mr. Yanukovych and Yulia Tymoshenko. Mr. Yanukovych took a page out of the Kremlin's penchant for dealing with nuisance political opposition forces and charged Ms. Tymoshenko with criminal offences against the state, imprisoning her and thus solving the problem of the nuisance factor. He's been an apt pupil of Vladimir Putin's.

Perhaps the growing opposition to Mr. Yanukovych expressing public rage over his vacillation in deciding to sign an economic union with the European Union to advance the wobbly financial situation in Ukraine, has a leader who may just in due time prove more resilient and powerful than Ms. Tymoshenko.

At 6-foot, 7-inches in height, Vitali Klitschko, a former world heavyweight boxing champion and now a member of parliament, has positioned himself to lead the opposition.

The past three weeks has seen massive demonstrations and violence as riot police were sent in to face off against demonstrators. More latterly after the statue of Lenin was brought down and destroyed by pick-ax-wielding demonstrators, the government sent in riot police to dismantle the barricades set up by the opposition.

Outright violence did not ensue as it had previously. People scattered in protest and vowed they would continue to occupy the public sphere in ongoing challenges to the government, until their president stepped down, until a union would be signed with the EU bringing Ukraine's future into the Western sphere.

AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky Ukrainian lawmaker and chairman of the opposition party Udar (Punch), WBC heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko surrounded by police trying to stop possible clashes between police and Pro-European Union activists in Kiev, Ukraine, Monday, Dec. 9, 2013.

Mr. Klitschko, with his impressive height impossible to ignore, has been a voice of caution and moderation. He calms the crowds of protesters, familiar with him from his association with the 2004 Orange Revolution protesting Mr. Yanukovych's fraud-filled election. He is the head of the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform party, pro-Western, anti-corruption, elected to parliament in 2012. And many hope he will run for president.

"Don't fall into a trap", he cautions the crowd. And they listen to him. As he barks into a megaphone, the frenzy of the crowd seems to dissipate. He is seen in a video from Sunday holding out his arms between protesters and a line of riot police. This is a man capable of instilling trust in those looking for a leader, a man of intelligence and possessed of the patience required to see such a colossal and important struggle through to a successful conclusion.

Mr. Klitschko has a background infused with experience of the past. His father had been a Soviet Air Force colonel, sent to the Chernobyl meltdown site. A man who spoke despairingly of the government coverup before dying of lymph node cancer at age 64. That cannot but have had an immense influence on how his son now views the successor to the Soviet Union and its current government, an autocrat in the mould of his Soviet predecessors.

Ukraine is split in its population; there are Russian speakers and those who speak Ukrainian. Mr. Klitschko's background was that of a Russian-speaker. Since then, however, his boxing career took him outside the geography of eastern Europe, to Germany, and to the United States where he and his brother lived in Hamburg and Los Angeles for awhile. Now, with all that behind him, and his career taken a trajectory into politics he may be prepared to present as a potential for president for Ukraine.