July 2014: Kyiv district court begins its review of the Ministry of Justice's appeal. (c) Inna Sokolovska / Demotix.On 16 December, a Kyiv district administrative court approved a claim by Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice. It sought to ban the country’s Communist Party (KPU).
Ukrainian society has come to see this court hearing as a ‘trial of communism’, and people’s sympathies have been divided precisely along these lines. However, the ministry’s claim, submitted in summer 2014, accused the KPU of aiding separatist movements in Ukraine’s east. That is, the claim contained no formal clause regarding the party’s ideology.
The ban has provoked mixed feelings from the Ukrainian left. Some celebrate the fall of the KPU: deemed the main barrier to the emergence of a real leftist movement in Ukraine, the party’s activities have discredited the very concept of left-wing politics here. Others have a gloomier outlook.
