A cold November night in Kiev. A massive stage erected on the "Maidan" – the Ukrainian capital's Independence Square. A crowd of thousands preparing to pitch tents and stay as long as it takes to force their government to give in.
Nine years ago this week, Ukrainians flooded the Maidan to demand a re-run of a fraudulent election. The successful uprising that came to be known as the Orange Revolution was about more than who should be the country's president; Ukrainians, half of them anyway, wanted to move their country out of Russia's orbit, and towards the European Union.
The crowds are back on the Maidan today because they've since lost everything they thought they gained in 2004. Viktor Yanukovych, the man behind the election fraud nine years ago, has improbably recovered to win the presidency. And last week, under heavy pressure from Moscow, he spiked a trade agreement and political association deal that would have put Ukraine on course for eventual EU membership.
Facing the implied threat of a winter disruption of the Russian-supplied gas that powers the Ukrainian economy, Mr. Yanukovych's government says it will now look at closer ties with Moscow. Instead of the EU, Ukraine will examine joining Russian President Vladimir Putin's pet project, the Eurasian Union.
The Eurasian Union, which is due to come into existence in 2015, is a political and economic pact that would restore much of Moscow's influence over the territories it lost when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Former Soviet states Belarus, Kazakhstan and Armenia have already agreed to join, but Ukraine – the largest former Soviet republic after Russia – is the prize Mr. Putin covets most.
Unless the protesters on what they're today calling "EuroMaidan" can force Mr. Yanukovych to again reverse course, Mr. Putin looks likely to get what he craves.
Ukraine is now right back where it was before the disputed 2004 election. The country is deeply divided between its Ukrainian-speaking, predominantly Catholic west and the Russian-speaking, Orthodox Christian east. Even the leading characters remain the same: one reason Mr. Yanukovych backed away from the EU deal was a demand that he release opposition leader and Orange Revolution heroine Yulia Tymoshenko, who is in jail on charges many see as trumped up.
Many among the crowd at the Maidan – some reports say there were more than 100,000 people there on Sunday, waving EU flags – are Ms. Tymoshenko's supporters. Fellow opposition leader (and boxing champ) Vitali Klitschko has also urged his followers to join the protest, which was monitored by a thick security presence.
Meanwhile a smaller pro-Russian crowd gathered in another part of Kiev to show their support for Mr. Yanukovych, as many Russian-speaking Ukrainians did during the post-election turmoil of 2004.
As night fell in Kiev, Mr. Yanukovych's supporters had gone home. And the pro-EU crowd was again pitching tents, getting ready to fight – again – for something they thought they had won nine years ago.
Mark MacKinnon