In previous articles I have touched on parts of this extraordinary period of Ukraine’s recent history.
Describing the period from the start until Yanukovych sat down with Putin to buy an end to the protests, and describing the period following the passing of the Dictatorship Laws. This record of what happened at certain times of the Revolution of Dignity isn’t enough.
The parts of the revolution that were the most attractive to TV news cameras from across the globe were the days and nights of clashes and of fire, but this fails to give the full picture of what happened during those 93 days. For those of us who stood on Maidan asking for change in Ukraine, the reality was of a long and hard fought struggle, with challenges on an almost daily basis, like the ever-present government directed thugs (“Titushki”) on the streets and the road blocks around Maidan to choke the supply of food and wood to the square.
Victor’s story
Victor was an ordinary man, he wore a suit to work, he was either an accountant or a lawyer. I knew him because the company where he worked shared a floor of an office building with my company – we were located on Kyiv’s main central street, Kreshchatyk, a few hundred meters from Maidan. We were acquaintances, on friendly nodding terms when we stood downstairs smoking cigarettes, we had little in common other than a bad habit.
The revolution started on Nov. 21, 2013. This is well known. But it took on a new momentum on the days of Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 in response to a foolish move made by a president who only calculated in terms of force and brutality, and whose calculations were rooted in greed.
In the early hours of Nov. 30 there was an excessive use of force against peaceful protesters on Maidan. The people enjoyed wielding their batons that night were the much-hated Berkut riot police. Again, these facts are well known and are repeated here just for background to the following story.
The Berkut operated from a base on Prospect Pobedy, and the day after the attack on the Maidan they found themselves blocked in to their buses outside of their base by hundreds of ordinary men and women, social media in Kyiv was buzzing with this unfolding story and as Victor arrived home that evening his wife told him not to take his coat off.
Victor and his wife went to join this group of citizens who were looking to establish the identities of those who had beaten the students of Maidan, the Berkut, a formidable and frightening group in any normal circumstance, were totally outnumbered. They were told they’d only be allowed off their buses if they removed their helmets so that their faces could be filmed and their identities established, because there was no trust at that time that the authorities might mount any serious investigation into the excess force used against unarmed kids.
When the Berkut were desperate (literally, in many cases) they relented, unharmed but certainly shaken, they passed through the throngs of people with their helmets removed and their faces on display, when the faces of the Berkut had been captured on film, the people calmly went home. A small but significant “people power” victory.
The next day Victor spoke to me in the kitchen our offices shared, “what kind of country do we live in where we have to do things like this?” he asked, in our first ever proper conversation.
Three months later Victor and his wife would figure again in My Maidan experience. On Feb. 19, the Maidan was a place in shock following the day of violence that preceded it, determined citizens toiled to meet the demands of a revolution that was, by now, something for which victory was the only acceptable outcome, because the unacceptable alternative was servitude. In the middle of Maidan I photographed a group of people working at a table weighed down with food, feeding the masses, when I shared the photographs on social media Victor came in to see me, he pointed at my screen and said, “that’s my wife.”
More violence came on the morning of Feb. 20, with the shootings of many people who are now known as the “Heavenly Hundred”, but after the sound of gunfire had died down, and regardless of (but certainly not oblivious to) the carnage that was around, Maidan continued to work towards the collective goal of saving the nation. As night fell I walked passed a group of people outside of the central post office who were ripping up, breaking up, and bagging up paving stones, they were the main (primitive) weapons Maidan had. A lady shouted at passersby not to go through empty handed, these bags needed to be transported to the perimeters of the territory controlled by the people.
Later that night I saw Victor. He was still in his suit, a formal coat over the top of it to help keep out the cold, with a sack of broken paving stones slung over his shoulder as he carried them to the barricades.
The Student
From Jan. 19 until Jan. 25, 2014 two kinds of fires burned on Hrushevskoho Street, both kinds of fire were about survival. One was a line separating the protesters and the authorities, that fire threw out a thick black smoke because it was stoked with car tires. I am not a religious person, but others have pointed out that every time fires burned in Kyiv (including on Maidan on Feb. 18 and Feb. 19) during the revolution the prevailing wind was always blowing towards the riot police, and away from the protesters, some people I know are convinced that this intervention was divine.
The second kind of fire was to stave off the bitter cold. Over the course of the clashes on Hrushevskoho Street the temperature had dropped to around minus 20, oil barrels became wood burners and people huddled to warm up around them so they could survive being outdoors for long periods of time in such conditions. I walked towards a barrel where I saw a free spot so I could grab some relief from the cold, by phone I told a friend, in English, where he could find me “second row of oil barrels, the one on the furthest to the left.” A young man next to me asked who I was, and, in flawless English he told me his story.
In front of us a battle raged, behind us a trebuchet was under construction to be able to lob Molotov cocktails and stones far enough to be able to hit the police lines beyond the wall of burning tires, around us hundreds of people beat the edges of the oil drums, and railings, and pieces of metal; with stones and with sticks. The noise was near-constant, but every now and then it would die down and the crowd of thousands would shout “bandits out” or “Glory to Ukraine” or “we stand.”
The young man asked me why I was there. I told him I wanted to understand, and so in turn I asked why he was there. “I’m a student,” he said. “I’d be at the front there fighting alongside the others, but I’ve recently had surgery on my leg.” He took out his phone and showed me pictures of how his leg had been rebuilt after it was shattered by shrapnel attached to a stun grenade thrown by police into a crowd outside the Presidential Administration during a relatively minor skirmish on the night of Dec. 1.
I pressed further. “OK, why were are you here now, and, why were you amongst the clashes on Bankova on Dec. 1?” His reply; “I’m 19 years old. For pretty much all of my life my country has been moving towards Europe. Since I was seven basically. When Yanukovych tried to take away the European future for my country, I knew that I needed to do something about it. He’s not going to steal my future.”
