Editor's Note: The following Kyiv Post article was originally published on Feb. 21, 2014 at 3:36 a.m.
As police bullets and tear gas rained down on protesters at Independence Square just after dawn on Feb. 20, the bloody body of one of the first victims of the violence was laid out with a candle memorial near the western barricade on Khreshchatyk Street.
A priest prayed over the body. A woman wept. A man, shaking his clenched fists in the air, shouted: “They are killing our heroes!”
Another man draped a Ukrainian flag on the man and then placed a sign above his head with a warning for Ukraine’s president: “Yanukovych, you’re next.”
Central Kyiv became a war zone just after breakfast time on Feb. 20, shattering a truce reached the night before by embattled President Viktor Yanukovych and opposition leaders. Either police and protesters weren’t listening, or they had different orders.
It remained unclear late on Feb. 20 who drew first blood on the country’s bloodiest day in its post-Soviet history.
Police told the Kyiv Post that the protesters attacked first, while several protesters at the scene said that the police started the fight when they threw an explosive at protesters, injuring several of them.
Amid the violence, several Yanukovych loyalists said they would leave the president’s ruling Party of Regions, including Volodymyr Makeyenko, the Kyiv City State Administration head appointed by the president.
The slain protester laid to rest on Khreschatyk Street died of two gunshot wounds to the back, a medic at the scene told the Kyiv Post, showing an armored vest that the man had worn with two bullet holes. “Large caliber,” he said, referring to the size of the bullet.
As the violence raged on at Institutska Street, protesters armed with improvised weapons, Molotov cocktails, stones and shields pushed police from their positions near Globus shopping mall and October Palace, reclaiming the positions they lost to police on Feb. 18 and expanding them in each direction. Following a barrage of Molotov cocktails, two police vehicles nearby became engulfed in flames. Several protesters were seen firing at police with live rounds from hunting rifles.
Police retaliated, while retreating deeper into the government district of the city, by heaving improvised explosive devices packed with nails and shooting shotguns and automatic rifles at protesters. From perches atop nearby buildings, several police snipers aimed and fired at protesters with great precision.
Dr. Olha Bohomolets told the Kyiv Post later in the day at Ukraina hotel, where the bodies of 12 dead protesters had been taken, that all had been shot in the head, neck, heart and lungs. They were not wearing armored vests, she said.
Police, she said, “did not allow doctors to treat them (protesters) immediately.”
“We may have been able to save the lives of some of them,” she added.
At 8:30 a.m. atop Independence Square was a gruesome mix of soot and oil and blood. Acrid black smoke billowed up from burning tires set alight to create a smokescreen from police. The bells of St. Michael’s Monastery rang out, echoing throughout the square.
There, thousands of protesters, their faces stained black, gave and obeyed orders to make more Molotov cocktails and crush more paving stones for a human chain to pass to the men fighting on the front lines.
Following each burst of gunfire, protesters could be seen toppling over. Some writhed and screeched in pain, grasping at the place on their bodies in which a bullet had entered. Smoke rose from the thigh wound of one man who was shot.
Others lay lifeless on the ground. Medics carried those bodies away on stretchers. One man, bleeding from his head, left a trail of blood 50 meters long, from the Independence Monument to a medical tent behind the main stage of the protest camp, where medics pronounced him dead on the scene.
Just after 9 a.m., protesters captured their first police officer, dragging him from Institutska Street to the EuroMaidan protest camp. Minutes later, more than 20 others were hauled in. Their faces bloody, their uniforms in tatters, protesters stripped them of their body armor and weapons to pass to men at the front lines.
Around 9:30, a group of 60 captured Interior Ministry officers were marched single-file down Khreschatyk Street to the Energy Company of Ukraine building near Kyiv’s city hall. Some spat at their captors in defiance and cursed, while the boyish faces of others appeared terrified of what might become of them as prisoners of war.
Interior Minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko warned in a statement posted to the ministry’s website that his officers were prepared to use force against the “extremists” who captured “fellow law enforcement officers.”
“We have the right to use all means provided to us by law, including weapons,” he said.
By nightfall, the death count had skyrocketed. Ukraine’s Health Ministry said that at least 75 people had been confirmed dead as a result of clashes this week – 26 on Feb. 18-19 and at least 49 on Feb. 20.
Kyiv Post editor Christopher J. Miller can be reached on Twitter at @ChristopherJM.
