AP Photo

Vasyl Boychuk still smokes too much, but at least now he has a proper roof over his head. In 2004, at the height of Ukraine's Orange Revolution, the then-38-year-old was frequently seen pulling on a cigarette well into the early hours, poring over logistics and political strategy with other demonstrators in the tent city that had grown outside the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament. Boychuk spent that December commanding the improvised camp, girded against Kyiv's bone-chilling cold and the prospect of violence by government authorities. Marching in the streets, tens of thousands of Ukrainians angered by a rigged presidential election the month before were buoyed by the prospect of democracy as promised by Viktor Yushchenko and his Orange forces. "It wasn't really an easy life,"...