It was a nice trip. <\/p>\n
You know, the one when you’re in the car with your best friend after a long separation. The distant lights ripping up the darkness in front of the car. It’s warm and cozy inside \u2013 mostly because of those -25 degrees outside the car glass. <\/p>\n
Driving in the darkness makes you even closer: small unimportant conversations from time to time dilute the big austere meaningful silence. \u201cI missed you..\u201d stays unsaid. <\/p>\n
I know Yura better than saying it. <\/p>\n
We\u2019re on the way to Maidan. My first day in Ukraine after more than half a year since my last visit. Ukraine feels so sharply different this time.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not fun to see bruises on your friend\u2019s skin and realize that you\u2019ve never had any idea what a rubber bullet is, or how a human body reacts to it. It\u2019s not fun to see your friend\u2019s phone with a fragment of a stun grenade in it lying on the shelf as, he jokes, a token of inscrutability of Lord\u2019s ways. It\u2019s not fun to see an old military helmet in your friend\u2019s car and think about what it can protect him from, and what not. <\/p>\n
We\u2019ve been in touch all this time, yet I never heard a word about him driving to Kyiv (Kiev) three nights a week (we both come from Zhytomyr \u2013 our hometown lies 130 km west from the Ukrainian capital) loaded with food, wood, warm clothes and old tires. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Internet\u2019s not safe\u201d, he explains. <\/p>\n
And now, in the car, all the things about Maidan I\u2019ve picked up on the internet, powered by things I\u2019ve touched, start forming into a massive gruesome picture of \u201ccivil unrest\u201d. And it\u2019s an uncomfortable strange almost Boschian reality to plunge into. <\/p>\n
I have a task. A little community of my friends here in Copenhagen collected money for Maidan \u2013 I\u2019m taking it there. In cash. Opposition accounts are being shut down in Ukraine every day. While we\u2019re still working on finding ways how to collect and transfer money from Denmark, some of us were fast enough to use the opportunity of my vacation \u2013 that\u2019s how I\u2019ve got the task. <\/p>\n
There\u2019s a person in Kyiv whose contact information I was given back in Copenhagen, now we\u2019re on the way to Kyiv where he\u2019s waiting for us. <\/p>\n
And this feeling of conspiracy, it\u2019s real, too: \u201cDear subscriber, you have been registered as a participant of civil unrest\u201d, I am reading on my friend\u2019s phone; this SMS started circulating around soon after Maidan emerged, and many my friends who visited Maidan received it. Yura chuckles: \u201cSMS don\u2019t bite..\u201d <\/p>\n
Here it is \u2013 Maidan. First thing that surprises me: it\u2019s huge! The frontier barricade on the Khreschatik side is in my estimation up to 5-6 meters high. There\u2019s a check point, we pass freely, all the cars are stopped at a narrow drive-in and some are being thoroughly checked. <\/p>\n
From the very first moments endless associations with a military camp: well-organized, efficient, utilitarian. Dozens of tents, hundreds of people, thousands of slogans. Smoke rising up in the air from each tent provoked reminiscences of small idyllic villages in winter \u2013 exactly the way they are routinely depicted on post-cards and children\u2019s books. <\/p>\n
Just before my visit, protesters erected a watchtower (!) guarding the slope of the Institutskaya street (I\u2019ve also heard of a large stationary catapult designed by protesters, but I\u2019ve never got to see it myself). Regardless of the warnings I do not find Maidan deserted \u2013 people are there. <\/p>\n
We\u2019re making our way to the heart of Maidan \u2013 the House of Professional Unions, a remarkable building just on the corner of Khreschatik (the main street in the center of Kyiv) and the Independence Square (the central point of the city \u2013 in Ukrainian \u201cMaidan Nezalezhnosti\u201d which has become simply Maidan). <\/p>\n
It takes us ten to fifteen minutes to pass the check-point at the entrance: we are waiting for somebody Andriy called before in order to obtain the pass. All this time I spend staring around \u2013 I\u2019m in the heart of revolution. <\/p>\n
Ages vary. I see teenagers and I see elderly people: many are equipped in a military-like fashion, helmets, clubs, shields; a middle-aged doctor is passing, wearing surgical coat with drops of blood on the sleeves; two young girls are walking by, almost groaning over a huge bucket of hot soup. The first thing that springs to mind is that it\u2019s after ten at night and nobody is idle, the atmosphere resembles a gigantic anthill that hardly ever sleeps.<\/p>\n
Finally we\u2019re through and on the way up. Up on the last floor. They also have a check-point at the entrance, so I again get a couple of minutes to look around. <\/p>\n
Young, too young, most of them teenagers or, at least, at their twenties. All are equipped with helmets, bullet-proof vests, knee-guards and elbow-pads, shields are standing all over the place, many of them are colorfully adorned with slogans and paintings. All along the walls there are mattresses. <\/p>\n
Another striking observation: there\u2019s a desk lamp by each of them, many are reading while some are sleeping. I catch myself at thinking I would love to walk around and see the books they read: books are telling, you know\u2026 <\/p>\n
Somebody touches my shoulder, I turn around to see a tall man wearing military uniform with chevrons which I can\u2019t decode, the man is wearing headscarf over his face; he\u2019s accompanied by two others with their faces covered, too. The dialogue is brief and dry:<\/p>\n
–\tI\u2019m from Denmark, I brought money, here..
\n–\tThank you. [the money is taken by one of the guys guarding at the check-point; the tall guy shakes my hand] We appreciate your support.
\n–\tWe\u2019re all with you.
\n–\tWe know. Glory to Ukraine!
\n–\tGlory to its heroes!<\/p>\n
That\u2019s it. We take stairs down, in a minute we\u2019re outside. I\u2019m depressed: I feel as a tourist, completely out of touch with this reality. To increase the feeling, Andrey suggests making a tour around Maidan towards Hrushevskogo \u2013 the site of the fiercest street battles. The first victims of the revolution died there. We start walking. <\/p>\n
In reality Maidan is surrounded by several levels of fortifications: the first circle limits the actual area of the Independence Square itself, then there are several more circles indicating the later progress of the protesters. <\/p>\n
When we approach the front outpost of the Revolution \u2013 the Hrushevskogo street \u2013 the scenes are turning into a real urban battlefield landscape: the buildings are burnt, the window-glasses missing, the cobblestones are gone. It looks, sounds, smells, feels like war; well, the way I can possibly imagine war \u2013 the person who\u2019s never been exposed to images of mass violence and state turmoil. <\/p>\n
The front barricade is by all means an outstanding masterpiece of street riot culture (excuse my pun): it\u2019s a double barricade with an irregular terrain similar to a ramification of trenches in between (again entirely based on images borrowed from war films) where there are old fuel barrels serving as fire-places where small groups of protesters were camping. <\/p>\n
We are climbing up the very front barricade \u2013 here they are: the enemy lines. The riot police are standing in line just thirty-forty meters away. Their shields are gleaming in the darkness, you can clearly see them. <\/p>\n
To further detach the look of it all from reality the bizarre psychological opposition is also taking place: the protesters installed a huge screen broadcasting Hromadske.tv online (the main independent TV channel) \u2013 the screen is turned towards the police lines. <\/p>\n
From the police side, on the contrary, a weird folk (remarkably, non-Ukrainian) music is wafted to our ears. I catch myself at thinking: \u201cWhen I go schizophrenic, it\u2019ll be like this\u2026\u201d Beside me there\u2019s a man standing up on the very brink of the hill-like barricade and screaming abusive, almost poetic, rubbish at the police; at that, he\u2019s courteously informing them of his name and the city he comes from. I think I can hear some answer from the other side. It all doesn\u2019t give the feeling of hatred or anger: a lazy inoffensive squabble, I\u2019d say\u2026<\/p>\n
We go back to the car. Yura and Andriy are talking to each other about things that are beyond my knowledge: unlike me, they live on the ground. I ask Andriy about what he thinks is going to happen. He cuts short: \u201cBloodshed\u201d. <\/p>\n
Why, I ask. \u201cToo many people that won\u2019t go anywhere from here, it\u2019s too late for them. They have weapons, too\u2026\u201d <\/p>\n
It was the night of the 30th of January. There had been 4 casualties back then. The official number of people who died in Kyiv in January-February 2014 is now 95 people. The number is still growing.<\/p>\n
See a few more pictures from my night on Maidan below.<\/p>\n
universitypost@adm.ku.dk<\/p>\n
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