Uprising in Kiev
I think no one expected this outcome. Neither the protesters themselves, nor the militia, nor Klichko, nor Tyagnibok, nor Yatcenuk, nor Parubiy, certainly not the rest of Maidan heads. Those, who led the governmental troops didn’t expect it, Rada (the Parliament) didn’t expect it and least of all Victor Yanukovich expected it. I really believe it all happened on its’ own accord. It was a chain of events, one leading to another, the flow couldn’t be stopped and here you are – the people in Maidan, covering themselves with the wooden shields, are storming Intstitutskaya street, and the sniper is killing them. Neither of the sides so far came to understand how it all happened. No conspirology involved, that’s for sure, even though that was one of the popular versions later. No sophisticated plan. It happens that way sometimes. Frankly, this is the way it happens most of the time.
The right wing of Maidan protesters decided to kick the militia out of the roof of the trade center “Globus”, because militia used that spot to throw the Molotov cocktails at the barricades and pour water at the protesters from water-cannons. The attack was well prepared. First came a massive bombardment of stones and bottles, then the protesters started to move forward. Basically all they wanted was to chase away the militia. And something weird happened, something unexpected by everyone. The militia fled. The militiamen in the center followed their left wing, now virtually non-existent. The protesters chased them too. The center and the barricades’ left wing, seeing the active movement, began the attack in the direction of European Square. There was only about a hundred soldiers defending this spot. Naturally they also fled. The crowd ran after them. The were some soldiers at the barricade on Grushevskogo street, they saw the troops running and the protesters chasing them, so they turned and started running up the street toward the governmental buildings too. The protesters got their barricade back, the one they were forced to leave a couple of days before that, and then stopped.
There were wounded militiamen in the Ukrainian House. The colonel came down into the street and asked for the permission to get his people out. The wounded were evacuated.
And that was the end of it on Institutskaya street.
At Grushevskogo street a small crowd of protesters started the attack. The story was pretty much the same. Attack, soldiers running, the second line of militia, seeing them run, ran as well, hid behind a concrete barricade and started shooting at the crowd. There were not too many people attacking, just a couple of hundred. About forty of them were killed in this clash.
Twelve of them were brought to the hotel “Ukraina”. Another ten corpses were brought to the hotel on the other side of Maidan. Eight were brought to Kreschatik street. All of them gunshot. Most of them in the head. Some of them were identified right on the spot. All of them were taken to Mikhailovsky Convent, which served as Maidan’s rear, and the hospital, and the morgue.
It happened all too fast. People came to realize what the new disposition was only a couple of hours later. There was a pause. Militia backed even farther, leaving small detached forces at the concrete barricades. The protesters started to build another barricade, putting their lives in danger because the sniper was still shooting from the roof. The protesters set the tires on fire to provide the smoke screen.
The paramedics set up their camp at the corner of the “Ukraina” hotel. The wall was all chipped by the sniper bullets, but if you kept down to a meter above the ground it was pretty safe, the sniper couldn’t get you there.
There was a neutral ground about 150 feet wide with another barricade, now almost deserted, in the middle. Protesters were constantly trying to get to this barricade to save several people who were trapped behind this barricade since morning and have been making vain attempts to get out of there under the cover of the smoke screen.
It turned out I was one of those trying to rescue them. I got to this barricade, even though how and when – I don’t quite remember. If not for two lop-sided pictures, I would have never known I was there. How did I get there, who was next to me? Not a faintest idea.
Just two vague flashes. Me, hiding behind the tree, taking pictures of two protesters. Only two trees separating them from the barricade, where people were trapped and killed. Three trees from where I was standing. And I do remember a young boy in a black coat, who was leaning with his back to the barricade. He suddenly sprang to his feet and ran to the left, in the direction of Institutskaya street. Sixty feet at the most and then you’ve got to duck behind the stone curb and you are saved. Everybody was yelling “Get down, you fool!” at him, and the sniper started shooting. Three or four shots. But he made it. And ducked. The smoke wasn’t too heavy then, but it saved him.
Everything else is a blur. How I got out of there, who was next to me, who was that doctor in my pictures – my memory is blank. All I know is that the sniper shot four more people at this barricade later in the evening, one of them in the stomach.
All of them survived.
We spent the night keeping watch on the barricade at the medical camp. I met Zhenya, 32, traumatologist from Dnepropetrovsk. He wore a white medical jacket with the red cross. He wrote his name, address and phone number with the marker on the flap – to make it easier to identify him, if he were killed. He told me how he dragged and bandaged the wounded from under the gunfire. How five of those wounded didn’t make it and died while he was holding them. How he had to choose between the two wounded, the one he was bandaging, realizing at the same time he couldn’t save the guy and the one who was brought to him later and had a far better chance to survive. How he left the first one to die and started taking care of the second one. How he was bandaging the wounded militiaman and couldn’t kill him, even though it would have been very easy, all it took was two shots of adrenaline, and no one would have ever known. This thought nearly drove Zhenya crazy. How that morning he crossed the mental border and accepted the fact that he would not make it home - surviving in this gunfire twice was simply impossible.
– ¬¬Why are you here?
– Because of the children. See, it has to be done anyway. If we don’t do it now,
our children will have to do it twenty years from now. And it’s gonna take a hell of a lot more effort then.
If we don’t do it, our children will have to finish it for us – not once I have heard people say this here.
And then came the morning… When the sun rose we saw that the city was empty. Berkut left. Retreated. Vanished into the blue. No militia either, except for several squads near Rada, the Parliament. No troops and no authorities.
What now? We had no idea. The protesters were preparing for another storm of the governmental buildings, preparing seriously and carefully, planning a real war operation. And it turned out there was no one to attack, the governmental block of buildings left empty.
The troops left. The streets nearby are all deserted with only skeletons of burnt military trucks to fill them. Sometimes you would see a lonely figure. A neat old lady exits the apartment building and asks if it is safe to go out. It is, I tell her, and she cautiously makes her way between the huge burnt trucks.
The sun is shining. It is quite warm. The wind carries the smell of spring. This looks so much like the post-war cities I have seen. Grozny after it was taken by Russians.
Young soldiers left by their commanders to guard Rada. Merely boys. They are tired and dirty, but cheerful. Happy. Quite friendly. They are asking me to take their pictures “for TV”.
The water-cannon is standing right next to the building. It is almost intact. Molotov’s cocktail is great if you are throwing it at the armored carriers, because their circuit compartment is always left open, one bottle over the tower and the machine goes up in flames. Water-cannons are sealed, the bottles can’t harm them.
I returned to the barricade, where so many people were killed the day before. About ninety feet from the place where I was crouching yesterday. Ninety feet you couldn’t cross. Everything is chipped by the sniper’s bullets. Trees, the concrete walls of the tall flower-bed. You can see how he was killing them. How he shot, how they hid behind the flower-bed, how he tried to get them out of there and how he finally got them, how they were dragged and given the pain-killers, then dragged again, this time behind the small wall and then to the rear – why, what for? You can see it all here.
The blood still hasn’t been absorbed by the ground. The soil is liquid. Literally.
And that hat with bloody clots inside. Again.
And here you are standing, trying not to step into the liquid soil, turning your head, staring at the blue house (this is where the sniper was camped yesterday, when he killed all those people, about 300 feet away, no more than that, hardly any distance at all for a profi), looking at the sun, smelling spring in the warm wind, staring at the street, now deserted, and you simply don’t understand…
What for? Ninety feet. Covered already by the protesters, piling out now from behind the barricades with their wooden shields, clubs and helmets. Standing there in silence, looking at the liquid soil. Why? For the sake of what? What did they want to achieve? Here we are, standing in this very spot, aren’t we? Why the hell did they have to kill all those people?
The liquid soil under your feet.
And one more thing. The shoe. Right next to the flower-bed.
One of those ten, their faces covered by the sheets in Maidan, had only one shoe.
This is his shoe.
Somehow it seems extremely important.
This shoe of his.
They were shot from a very close distance. 300 feet. Nothing for a sniper. Slaughtered.
I always wanted to know what’s going on inside the snipers’ head. What was he thinking, trying to kill obviously unarmed people? There was no way he couldn’t have seen they were unarmed. What was he thinking, shooting at them? What was he imagining? Who were these people for him? Merely the targets? Shooting marks? Or the enemy, the real enemy, whom you must to eliminate no matter what, no sympathy allowed? Did he actually hate them or did he simply do his job, knocking them out one by one? Did he believe that he was saving his Motherland, was he staying true to the oath and order? Or did he cross the line happily, the line familiar to any soldier – when you can use your only chance to kill a human being and get away with it? Or did he merely try to save his life?
And returning to the subject of arms, yes, the protesters did have them. This is no harmless bleating of the sheep in the pen full of colorful balloons. In the three months that Maidan stood there it turned into a full-blown revolution with a precise goal – to overthrow the illegitimate authorities, thieves, that usurped the power. And Maidan was armed. We are grown people, we need to understand this. How many guns did they have? I would think over a hundred. Hardly thousands and definitely more than several dozens. No one would give you the exact figure. Most of those guns remained packed and hidden. They were used only on several occasions. Let me repeat this, there were over a hundred guns, but only SEVERAL of them were fired. This wasn’t a mass shooting. Maidan withheld from opening the gunfire up to the very last moment. And used those guns only in the last two days of the fight. But if the clashes hadn’t been over, it would have turned into the real war.
I can testify only on two cases. One happened at the barricades on the night of the 20th of February. A man used it against the militia. And another one – to block the water-cannon. I think those two were used pretty much at the same time.
The other two or three cases were taped on video by the reporters.
I saw this water-cannon again, when the troops left, parked right next to Rada. Five bullet holes. 7,62. One would assume it was a hunting carbine “Tigr”. One hole in the front, in the center of the cabin. One in the door at the foot level. Three closer to the back. Another water-cannon, also a huge truck, was shot at twice, also in the front of the cabin and in the top right of the wind-shield, under the headlight. And the third truck - with two holes.
The water-cannon came down towards Maidan with its’ left side to the barricades, and the holes are on the left side. It is obvious that the protesters didn’t aim at the driver. Holes in the center of the cabin and near the headlight.
This water-cannon was hijacked, along with two other military trucks, and I saw it near Rada, so anyone who cares can go and see for himself.
Titushki (the hired by the government criminals paid to beat the protesters up, attack and kill them) were very quick to leave the Maryiinsky Park and dozens of flags of the Region’s governmental party were found there. Now the protesters drive around Kiev in these hijacked trucks, chanting “Victory” and the flags attached at the back of the trucks are sweeping the streets.
It is amazing, how everything has fallen into pieces over night. One night. The whole criminal machine with the governmental party, Rada, the Berkut troops, militia and titushki, with the usurped power and outlaws for the authorities – all ashes swept away in a blink. The senators abandoned the governmental Regions’s party so fast you’d think they were chased, Berkut troops boarded fifty buses, said they were betrayed by their commander Zakharchenko, told everyone to go to hell and left with the tires screeching in the direction of Simpheropol, the capital of the Crimea. Yanukovich jumped on a plane and circled the boarders for quite a while, finally landing in Kharkiv (the capital of eastern Ukraine). The governor and mayor of Kharkiv fled to Russia, Kiev Berkut was blocked at their military base and kept very low, afraid to sneeze too loudly until they were given transportation and an armed escort to get them out of there and to the airport. Otherwise people would have torn them to pieces in the streets.
President’s residence and the residence of Chief Prosecutor are now sites for numerous excursions.
- Have a look, bros, here is our money.
My newspaper asked me to portray the typical right radical protester. Those young guys from the “Right Sector”. I am wandering along the streets and barricades and realize there is no one to write about… This is their best description – no one to describe. They are all either at the Convent hospital or in the morgues. All struck out.
Today protesters are a very different crowd. No more loud teenagers chanting nationalistic verses. Now you would see more of grown men, dirty, somewhat battered, smoking cheap cigarettes with no filter. Next to them, shoulder to shoulder, are well-dressed and well-educated people. I remember one of them, the day before it was over, talking English to American and British reporters. He showed them pictures of himself hiding behind the dead bodies under the gunfire. Then he gave them his business cards. At a barricade. Just like that. With a sniper shooting at everyone. Ninety feet from the place ten people were killed. A business card.
One of my colleagues said every Banderovtz (name for fascist Ukrainians) here has
a university degree.
Well, the Ukranians did warn the government, didn’t they? They told everyone they would die for their freedom and prove themselves real Cossacks. And they kept their promise. They gave their lives and souls for that freedom. They took baseball bats and wooden shields and attacked the troops armed with the machineguns. No doubt here, they are real Cossacks.
I don’t know why those who were killed moved me so much. The journalists profession is a bitchy one, and cynical too. You can’t survive without that. But somehow I can’t stop thinking about them. This hasn’t happened to me in a long time. I haven’t even seen their faces, their eyes. I don’t know their names, don’t know who they were, never talked to them. I haven’t even seen them die. So why does it bother me so much?
Maybe because they died for something I was prepared to die for? Because I share their beliefs and their passion for freedom? Because they are just like me? And I am like them? And prepared to die too? For my children. Because if we don’t do it, our children will have to deal with this mess instead of us. And it’s going to be a lot harder for them to do that. But it will still have to be done. Because, as they said at the barricades, slaves aren’t let into Heaven.
After the victory I saw the “doctors” in one of the restaurants near Maidan. Sitting and drinking. Toasting the fact that they survived. No celebration, just bitterness. Young boys and girls, students, many of them under twenty, freshmen, juniors. They toasted the medical personnel at Maidan. And the whole restaurant, all Ukrainians and foreigners, journalists and locals, rose and started applauding.
They will be fine, I am sure of that.
What next? I have no idea. All roads are open for them, they can live the way they want to. Now it’s up to Ukrainians to decide which country they want to live in. What kind of life they will build. Ultra-nationalist, moderate, liberal? Will they widen the gap between the east and the west of Ukraine? Or will they learn to live together?
The next few months will definitely be very trying. There will be a lot of fighting over the power, over euro-integration, there will be weird laws issued, old ones cancelled, there will be a fight for and against Russian language and so on. Looks like there is no way to avoid it. The ultra-rights will certainly claim their victory and they will be right, you’ve got to give them that. But for some reason I am sure that this country will not follow the nationalist path. Maidan was represented by all kinds of people and most of them were no nationalists. I do believe they will have enough strength and common sense to do things right.
However it is, the future of Ukraine is now in the hands of Ukrainians.
Arkady Babchenko,
“New Times”
Translated by Kathy Shabutsky
The right wing of Maidan protesters decided to kick the militia out of the roof of the trade center “Globus”, because militia used that spot to throw the Molotov cocktails at the barricades and pour water at the protesters from water-cannons. The attack was well prepared. First came a massive bombardment of stones and bottles, then the protesters started to move forward. Basically all they wanted was to chase away the militia. And something weird happened, something unexpected by everyone. The militia fled. The militiamen in the center followed their left wing, now virtually non-existent. The protesters chased them too. The center and the barricades’ left wing, seeing the active movement, began the attack in the direction of European Square. There was only about a hundred soldiers defending this spot. Naturally they also fled. The crowd ran after them. The were some soldiers at the barricade on Grushevskogo street, they saw the troops running and the protesters chasing them, so they turned and started running up the street toward the governmental buildings too. The protesters got their barricade back, the one they were forced to leave a couple of days before that, and then stopped.
There were wounded militiamen in the Ukrainian House. The colonel came down into the street and asked for the permission to get his people out. The wounded were evacuated.
And that was the end of it on Institutskaya street.
At Grushevskogo street a small crowd of protesters started the attack. The story was pretty much the same. Attack, soldiers running, the second line of militia, seeing them run, ran as well, hid behind a concrete barricade and started shooting at the crowd. There were not too many people attacking, just a couple of hundred. About forty of them were killed in this clash.
Twelve of them were brought to the hotel “Ukraina”. Another ten corpses were brought to the hotel on the other side of Maidan. Eight were brought to Kreschatik street. All of them gunshot. Most of them in the head. Some of them were identified right on the spot. All of them were taken to Mikhailovsky Convent, which served as Maidan’s rear, and the hospital, and the morgue.
It happened all too fast. People came to realize what the new disposition was only a couple of hours later. There was a pause. Militia backed even farther, leaving small detached forces at the concrete barricades. The protesters started to build another barricade, putting their lives in danger because the sniper was still shooting from the roof. The protesters set the tires on fire to provide the smoke screen.
The paramedics set up their camp at the corner of the “Ukraina” hotel. The wall was all chipped by the sniper bullets, but if you kept down to a meter above the ground it was pretty safe, the sniper couldn’t get you there.
There was a neutral ground about 150 feet wide with another barricade, now almost deserted, in the middle. Protesters were constantly trying to get to this barricade to save several people who were trapped behind this barricade since morning and have been making vain attempts to get out of there under the cover of the smoke screen.
It turned out I was one of those trying to rescue them. I got to this barricade, even though how and when – I don’t quite remember. If not for two lop-sided pictures, I would have never known I was there. How did I get there, who was next to me? Not a faintest idea.
Just two vague flashes. Me, hiding behind the tree, taking pictures of two protesters. Only two trees separating them from the barricade, where people were trapped and killed. Three trees from where I was standing. And I do remember a young boy in a black coat, who was leaning with his back to the barricade. He suddenly sprang to his feet and ran to the left, in the direction of Institutskaya street. Sixty feet at the most and then you’ve got to duck behind the stone curb and you are saved. Everybody was yelling “Get down, you fool!” at him, and the sniper started shooting. Three or four shots. But he made it. And ducked. The smoke wasn’t too heavy then, but it saved him.
Everything else is a blur. How I got out of there, who was next to me, who was that doctor in my pictures – my memory is blank. All I know is that the sniper shot four more people at this barricade later in the evening, one of them in the stomach.
All of them survived.
We spent the night keeping watch on the barricade at the medical camp. I met Zhenya, 32, traumatologist from Dnepropetrovsk. He wore a white medical jacket with the red cross. He wrote his name, address and phone number with the marker on the flap – to make it easier to identify him, if he were killed. He told me how he dragged and bandaged the wounded from under the gunfire. How five of those wounded didn’t make it and died while he was holding them. How he had to choose between the two wounded, the one he was bandaging, realizing at the same time he couldn’t save the guy and the one who was brought to him later and had a far better chance to survive. How he left the first one to die and started taking care of the second one. How he was bandaging the wounded militiaman and couldn’t kill him, even though it would have been very easy, all it took was two shots of adrenaline, and no one would have ever known. This thought nearly drove Zhenya crazy. How that morning he crossed the mental border and accepted the fact that he would not make it home - surviving in this gunfire twice was simply impossible.
– ¬¬Why are you here?
– Because of the children. See, it has to be done anyway. If we don’t do it now,
our children will have to do it twenty years from now. And it’s gonna take a hell of a lot more effort then.
If we don’t do it, our children will have to finish it for us – not once I have heard people say this here.
And then came the morning… When the sun rose we saw that the city was empty. Berkut left. Retreated. Vanished into the blue. No militia either, except for several squads near Rada, the Parliament. No troops and no authorities.
What now? We had no idea. The protesters were preparing for another storm of the governmental buildings, preparing seriously and carefully, planning a real war operation. And it turned out there was no one to attack, the governmental block of buildings left empty.
The troops left. The streets nearby are all deserted with only skeletons of burnt military trucks to fill them. Sometimes you would see a lonely figure. A neat old lady exits the apartment building and asks if it is safe to go out. It is, I tell her, and she cautiously makes her way between the huge burnt trucks.
The sun is shining. It is quite warm. The wind carries the smell of spring. This looks so much like the post-war cities I have seen. Grozny after it was taken by Russians.
Young soldiers left by their commanders to guard Rada. Merely boys. They are tired and dirty, but cheerful. Happy. Quite friendly. They are asking me to take their pictures “for TV”.
The water-cannon is standing right next to the building. It is almost intact. Molotov’s cocktail is great if you are throwing it at the armored carriers, because their circuit compartment is always left open, one bottle over the tower and the machine goes up in flames. Water-cannons are sealed, the bottles can’t harm them.
I returned to the barricade, where so many people were killed the day before. About ninety feet from the place where I was crouching yesterday. Ninety feet you couldn’t cross. Everything is chipped by the sniper’s bullets. Trees, the concrete walls of the tall flower-bed. You can see how he was killing them. How he shot, how they hid behind the flower-bed, how he tried to get them out of there and how he finally got them, how they were dragged and given the pain-killers, then dragged again, this time behind the small wall and then to the rear – why, what for? You can see it all here.
The blood still hasn’t been absorbed by the ground. The soil is liquid. Literally.
And that hat with bloody clots inside. Again.
And here you are standing, trying not to step into the liquid soil, turning your head, staring at the blue house (this is where the sniper was camped yesterday, when he killed all those people, about 300 feet away, no more than that, hardly any distance at all for a profi), looking at the sun, smelling spring in the warm wind, staring at the street, now deserted, and you simply don’t understand…
What for? Ninety feet. Covered already by the protesters, piling out now from behind the barricades with their wooden shields, clubs and helmets. Standing there in silence, looking at the liquid soil. Why? For the sake of what? What did they want to achieve? Here we are, standing in this very spot, aren’t we? Why the hell did they have to kill all those people?
The liquid soil under your feet.
And one more thing. The shoe. Right next to the flower-bed.
One of those ten, their faces covered by the sheets in Maidan, had only one shoe.
This is his shoe.
Somehow it seems extremely important.
This shoe of his.
They were shot from a very close distance. 300 feet. Nothing for a sniper. Slaughtered.
I always wanted to know what’s going on inside the snipers’ head. What was he thinking, trying to kill obviously unarmed people? There was no way he couldn’t have seen they were unarmed. What was he thinking, shooting at them? What was he imagining? Who were these people for him? Merely the targets? Shooting marks? Or the enemy, the real enemy, whom you must to eliminate no matter what, no sympathy allowed? Did he actually hate them or did he simply do his job, knocking them out one by one? Did he believe that he was saving his Motherland, was he staying true to the oath and order? Or did he cross the line happily, the line familiar to any soldier – when you can use your only chance to kill a human being and get away with it? Or did he merely try to save his life?
And returning to the subject of arms, yes, the protesters did have them. This is no harmless bleating of the sheep in the pen full of colorful balloons. In the three months that Maidan stood there it turned into a full-blown revolution with a precise goal – to overthrow the illegitimate authorities, thieves, that usurped the power. And Maidan was armed. We are grown people, we need to understand this. How many guns did they have? I would think over a hundred. Hardly thousands and definitely more than several dozens. No one would give you the exact figure. Most of those guns remained packed and hidden. They were used only on several occasions. Let me repeat this, there were over a hundred guns, but only SEVERAL of them were fired. This wasn’t a mass shooting. Maidan withheld from opening the gunfire up to the very last moment. And used those guns only in the last two days of the fight. But if the clashes hadn’t been over, it would have turned into the real war.
I can testify only on two cases. One happened at the barricades on the night of the 20th of February. A man used it against the militia. And another one – to block the water-cannon. I think those two were used pretty much at the same time.
The other two or three cases were taped on video by the reporters.
I saw this water-cannon again, when the troops left, parked right next to Rada. Five bullet holes. 7,62. One would assume it was a hunting carbine “Tigr”. One hole in the front, in the center of the cabin. One in the door at the foot level. Three closer to the back. Another water-cannon, also a huge truck, was shot at twice, also in the front of the cabin and in the top right of the wind-shield, under the headlight. And the third truck - with two holes.
The water-cannon came down towards Maidan with its’ left side to the barricades, and the holes are on the left side. It is obvious that the protesters didn’t aim at the driver. Holes in the center of the cabin and near the headlight.
This water-cannon was hijacked, along with two other military trucks, and I saw it near Rada, so anyone who cares can go and see for himself.
Titushki (the hired by the government criminals paid to beat the protesters up, attack and kill them) were very quick to leave the Maryiinsky Park and dozens of flags of the Region’s governmental party were found there. Now the protesters drive around Kiev in these hijacked trucks, chanting “Victory” and the flags attached at the back of the trucks are sweeping the streets.
It is amazing, how everything has fallen into pieces over night. One night. The whole criminal machine with the governmental party, Rada, the Berkut troops, militia and titushki, with the usurped power and outlaws for the authorities – all ashes swept away in a blink. The senators abandoned the governmental Regions’s party so fast you’d think they were chased, Berkut troops boarded fifty buses, said they were betrayed by their commander Zakharchenko, told everyone to go to hell and left with the tires screeching in the direction of Simpheropol, the capital of the Crimea. Yanukovich jumped on a plane and circled the boarders for quite a while, finally landing in Kharkiv (the capital of eastern Ukraine). The governor and mayor of Kharkiv fled to Russia, Kiev Berkut was blocked at their military base and kept very low, afraid to sneeze too loudly until they were given transportation and an armed escort to get them out of there and to the airport. Otherwise people would have torn them to pieces in the streets.
President’s residence and the residence of Chief Prosecutor are now sites for numerous excursions.
- Have a look, bros, here is our money.
My newspaper asked me to portray the typical right radical protester. Those young guys from the “Right Sector”. I am wandering along the streets and barricades and realize there is no one to write about… This is their best description – no one to describe. They are all either at the Convent hospital or in the morgues. All struck out.
Today protesters are a very different crowd. No more loud teenagers chanting nationalistic verses. Now you would see more of grown men, dirty, somewhat battered, smoking cheap cigarettes with no filter. Next to them, shoulder to shoulder, are well-dressed and well-educated people. I remember one of them, the day before it was over, talking English to American and British reporters. He showed them pictures of himself hiding behind the dead bodies under the gunfire. Then he gave them his business cards. At a barricade. Just like that. With a sniper shooting at everyone. Ninety feet from the place ten people were killed. A business card.
One of my colleagues said every Banderovtz (name for fascist Ukrainians) here has
a university degree.
Well, the Ukranians did warn the government, didn’t they? They told everyone they would die for their freedom and prove themselves real Cossacks. And they kept their promise. They gave their lives and souls for that freedom. They took baseball bats and wooden shields and attacked the troops armed with the machineguns. No doubt here, they are real Cossacks.
I don’t know why those who were killed moved me so much. The journalists profession is a bitchy one, and cynical too. You can’t survive without that. But somehow I can’t stop thinking about them. This hasn’t happened to me in a long time. I haven’t even seen their faces, their eyes. I don’t know their names, don’t know who they were, never talked to them. I haven’t even seen them die. So why does it bother me so much?
Maybe because they died for something I was prepared to die for? Because I share their beliefs and their passion for freedom? Because they are just like me? And I am like them? And prepared to die too? For my children. Because if we don’t do it, our children will have to deal with this mess instead of us. And it’s going to be a lot harder for them to do that. But it will still have to be done. Because, as they said at the barricades, slaves aren’t let into Heaven.
After the victory I saw the “doctors” in one of the restaurants near Maidan. Sitting and drinking. Toasting the fact that they survived. No celebration, just bitterness. Young boys and girls, students, many of them under twenty, freshmen, juniors. They toasted the medical personnel at Maidan. And the whole restaurant, all Ukrainians and foreigners, journalists and locals, rose and started applauding.
They will be fine, I am sure of that.
What next? I have no idea. All roads are open for them, they can live the way they want to. Now it’s up to Ukrainians to decide which country they want to live in. What kind of life they will build. Ultra-nationalist, moderate, liberal? Will they widen the gap between the east and the west of Ukraine? Or will they learn to live together?
The next few months will definitely be very trying. There will be a lot of fighting over the power, over euro-integration, there will be weird laws issued, old ones cancelled, there will be a fight for and against Russian language and so on. Looks like there is no way to avoid it. The ultra-rights will certainly claim their victory and they will be right, you’ve got to give them that. But for some reason I am sure that this country will not follow the nationalist path. Maidan was represented by all kinds of people and most of them were no nationalists. I do believe they will have enough strength and common sense to do things right.
However it is, the future of Ukraine is now in the hands of Ukrainians.
Arkady Babchenko,
“New Times”
Translated by Kathy Shabutsky