Two weeks ago the Reuters News agency showed pictures of the Independence Square in Kiev full of frost and sparkling with people. The number of participants has fallen in the last month but the Maidan protest remains strong in spite of the adverse climate. The European aspirations of the people are unlikely to be the reason.

The struggles against anti-democratic rules and the 2004 Orange Revolution echo on the capital’s central square are an important part of Ukrainian recent history. Ironically in less than a decade the same setting witnesses the same actors involved. In November 2013 people protested against Mr Janukovych and his last-minute decision to back away from the EU association. These early events classified the movement as Western oriented and pro-democratic. Over a night Maidan turned into Euro-Maidan.

The people in Kiev are not as passionate about the European Union as the western politicians would wish. Initially many social activists hesitated to join the protest supporting the association regardless their sudden feelings of alienation from the reality they believed to have had an influence over. The campaign against Mr Janukovych took its massive shape after the 30th November when the police special units under the Ministry of Internal Affairs brutally dispersed students and female activists. Ilko Kucheriv’s, Democratic Initiatives Foundation survey shows that 70% of the people begun to protest because of the following rage. The support came from all over the country. Plenty of doctors risked taking unpaid holidays to provide so much needed medical help. A group of them from Uschhorod, Western Ukraine will face an immediate notice should they now decide to go home.

The daily economic hardships overweight the abstract concept of western democracy. People at Maidan carry no clear idea of what the association stands for. They neither share a strong leader or political agenda. The standard divisions between political parties do not play the same role they used to during the Orange Revolution. Ukrainians are fed up with the pitiful economic situation, low wages and growing living expenses. Their country’s economic output is three times smaller than neighbouring Poland, which has since broken the shackles of the disastrous nature of the communist economy. The reforms in fiscal policies, under the current administration, have hindered the performance of small business and removed the safety net by cuts in the welfare provision. The problems of corruption and an inefficient justice response have lead to a creeping feelings of disaffection from the system and its ordinary procedures.

Mr Janukovych replacement will not make up for the pitfalls of the current model of democracy. The loss of faith in the party system, challenges the hope invested in a change  of actors in the Ukrainian political scene. It is not exclusively the Ukrainian case. The worldwide spread of civic activism, people have used their presence to bring alienated politics back to the ground. Things are done differently. Anna Khvyl, a social activists form Lviv, experienced this novelty during the gender mainstreaming action ‘The Half of Maidan’, which was successful among people of radically different backgrounds. The protesters do not strive for attaining the dominant power. They struggle to equally share it, but leave no doubt to whom it belongs: The people.

The Ukrainian movement grasped the power of every day politics. Capable of much more than the parliamentary representation, they however realised it is proving to be very difficult to influence the conventional hierarchies of state. The European system and its procedures are not the stake in this fight. To be a part of the ferment on Maidan comes as close to the experience of democracy as it possibly will.