A few blocks from Kyiv’s bleak and imposing Stalinist-style Maidan square lies a nondescript alleyway. Passing through a gate, one arrives at Ukraine’s revolutionary café, Bar Baraban, which played a key role in protests resulting in the eventual toppling of the unpopular government of Viktor Yanukovych. Three years ago, as the political situation worsened on the Maidan amidst a nasty police crackdown, the owner of Baraban, Gennady Kanishthemko, turned his bar into a makeshift refuge for protesters who feared for their lives.
A jolly middle-aged man with close-cropped beard, Kanishthemko is all too willing to relive the heady days of Maidan. “For me,” he remarks over a pot of tea, “the revolution started not on Dec 1st, 2013 when almost a million people rallied in the square, but earlier when students set up shop in Maidan to protest Yanukovych’s decision to sign a customs union with Russia rather than an association agreement with the European Union.” On the night of November 30th, Kanishthemko found himself at work very late at night. The owner’s staff had already left and the only souls remaining at Bar Baraban were Kanishthemko and a Danish journalist surfing the internet.
