Today is the tenth anniversary of the Orange Revolution, which began as a protest against the falsification of the presidential elections in Ukraine in 2004.
On November 21, 2004, a second round of the elections took place, the opposing candidates in which were Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and oppositional candidate Viktor Yushchenko.
After the announcement of the preliminary official results of the polls, according to which Yanukovych had won by 3%, it became obvious they were different from the exit poll data. Yushchenko’s supporters and most foreign observers thought that Yanukovych’s team had falsified the elections.
On the next day after the polls, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets of Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities to protest against the mass falsification.
After long protests and demonstrations, a repeated second round was announced, and amendments were made to the Constitution. According to the results in the second round of the elections, Viktor Yushchenko had won.
According to unofficial data, overall between three to seven million Ukrainians participated in the protests.
