The Maidan is Still Here

My apartment in Kyiv was situated on Volodymyrs'ka Street, tucked away behind St. Sofia's Cathedral.

I captured this stunning view of St. Sofia's at sunset

Wandering around this part of town, I was surprised to see how little had changed. Reading all of the news reports and watching all of the live videos from Kyiv had made it seem like half the city had been destroyed. My first hint that things were different was the medical tent which was still pitched in front of St. Michael's monastery.

The tent is at the bottom-left, with the Ukrainian flag on top. The first night that the police beat protesters, they fled and were given sanctuary in this monastery. Monks gave them tea, medical care, and a warm place to rest, and prayed over them, while locking out the riot police.

It was surprising, indeed, when the woman in the produkti where I stopped for a bottle of water addressed me in Ukrainian and not in Russian. But it would not be until that evening, when I went down to the Khreshchatyk, Kyiv's main boulevard, that I was again surprised to see just how much had changed.

Shevchenko's 200th birthday poster appears many places down the street.

Shevchenko's stern countenance also stares out from the Rada building, where protesters set up camp for months during the winter. The spray-painted label of "Revolution Headquarters" has now been painted out. The white sign says that the Rada building is closed for renovation and repairs, and apologizes for any inconvenience.

Army tents are still set up in the middle of the street; men in fatigues wander between them. They hang with signs describing the group which lives inside: many are from regions like Vinnytsia, Luhansk or Crimea, while others carry the party logos of far-right groups like Pravy Sektor and Spilna Sprava.

The tent from Vinnytsia

The Maidan itself is unrecognizable from my previous visit. The burnt-out husk of the Trade Unions building towers over everything as a somber reminder of the violence which has occurred here. Its charred facade has been sprinkled with blots of pink paint, which seem to glow like sparks in the twilight.

The last time I returned to the Maidan, after these pictures were taken, one side of the Trade Unions Building had been covered by a screen showing the iconic Ukrainian landscape of golden wheat under a blue sky, with the words, "Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes"

Some barricades still remain, made of tires, cobblestones, and debris.

The base of Hrushevskoho Street, where the first protesters were killed after the passage of repressive anti-protest laws in January.

This sign says, "25 May [the date of the election] your voice is crucial- time to live anew"

You can also see where Maidan activists tore up the cobblestones to build the barricades and for use as weapons against the riot police. In some of these spaces there are stacks of new bricks waiting to be lain, but as yet they are still unrepaired.

The above reads "A united country"

And rising up through the center of it all, the "yolka"--the Christmas tree which was never fully assembled, which became the beacon for the protests.

"It all started with this yolka," my friend Halya tells me, "because the government wanted to put it up, but the students would not allow them to do it." As the protests went on, the yolka became covered with flags and banners rather than evergreen boughs.

These say "Everyone together against Putin" and "We love Russians, we despise Putin"

The message of the Maidan has changed; now that Yanukovych is gone, focus has shifted to the violence in the East of the country and Russia's role in it. Anti-Russia sentiment is much more apparent than before. More Ukrainian is being spoken in Kyiv than before. Though things are quiet here now, this was the place where the first blood was spilled, where a hundred protesters were shot by government snipers just days before Yanukovych fled and Russian troops invaded Crimea.

I walked with Halya up to Instituts'ka street, where most of the deaths occurred.

It is difficult to capture this experience in words, because the wounds are still so raw. The barricades are still here, layer on layer of them. Memorials line the street on either side, covered with mounds of flowers, candles, and pictures of the dead. Some of them were quite young-- we stopped at the memorial of a man who was only 18 years old. Friends and family stand mourning before them. Pointing, Halya shows me where the snipers were standing-- on top of Hotel Ukrainia, where I stayed in 2012 before observing the Parliamentary elections. Then she shows me a metal lamppost with bullet holes in it. "The men were carrying wooden shields," she says, "it could not protect them from bullets like this. Or their helmets." They are heroes, she says. She is sure they are in heaven now.

The people who remain on the Maidan these days, however, have ambiguous significance. They claim that they needed to stay in place until the election in order to ensure that all of the demands of the Maidan were fully carried out in accordance with the wishes of the people. But, several Ukrainians told me, the people there now are not really representatives of the people. "They should go home now," my friend Halya tells me, "Go home to their families, go back to work. We got what we wanted. There is no need for them to be here any more. They are just lazy. They sit here all day and drink. And then people come to the Maidan and see them, and they say 'Oh, the people on Maidan were just a bunch of lazy drunks.' They say they are heroes, but if they were really heroes, they would be going to the east." Whether it is really laziness or Post-Traumatic Stress, it's hard to say. But it is certainly clear that these men (because they are mostly men) do plan to stay here for a while.

Klitschko, the new mayor-elect, last week called for the square to be cleared. Now he has retracted that call. It will be interesting to see what happens with this space in the future.

"European Square" at the end of Khreshchatyk. The sign reads "A United Country" in both Ukrainian and in Russian.

More Adventures in Kyiv

Still suffering from jet lag and still sore from yesterday's walking, I slept late and stayed in most of the day today. Around 3:30 I went out, thinking I would head over to Lypky, a district which is supposed to contain numerous old mansions including the House of Chimeras. As has happened to me so repeatedly on this trip, though, I got a little lost. I found myself near Kyiv University. That was where this building caught my eye-- turns out it is the building of the National Bank-- gorgeous!

They just don't build them like that in the U.S. Although I did not find the House of Chimeras (today), I did achieve another (possibly more important) goal-- I found a grocery store, and was able to procure the necessary items for surviving the next two days until I go to Vinnytsia. I didn't want to buy a lot of food because I will have to take everything on the train on Monday. Instead, I figured I could eat out for lunch and dinner, and just got some chocolate, tea, and yogurt for the next two days.

Best of all, I was reunited with my long-lost love-- Svitoch chocolate. Words cannot express the joy I felt upon seeing it in the store. This chocolate is made in L'viv, and it is so, so good. My favorite is the white chocolate coconut, but as you can see I also purchased some of the tiramisu and raisin nut varieties. With the groceries now in my bag, I realized that I needed to head back to my apartment to refrigerate them, since I doubted that the yogurt would last otherwise. On the way back, I stopped to take some more pictures of St. Oleksandr's (below) and St. Sofia's.

These two churches are on either end of St. Sofia's square, a huge plaza lined with beautiful buildings on one side and a park on the other.

I need to go back to St. Sofia's tomorrow-- none of my pictures of that end of the square came out because of the sun setting behind it. I had similar difficulty taking pictures of the Opera House (below), which is right behind my apartment building.

I topped off the evening with dinner with my friend Mykola, one of my students from the English Summer School two years ago. He took me to a restaurant on the Khreschatyk, a traditional Ukrainian cafeteria-style restaurant with good prices. It was a delicious dinner. I helped him practice his English and he showed me pictures of his little baby, Danimir. I was waiting on the Maydan Nezalezhnosti-- the main square-- for Mykola, near the "Three Heroes" fountain (pictured below), when some woman came up to me and asked for directions in Russian. I only understood about a third of what she said, so I had to laugh sheepishly and answer "Ya ne znayoo" (I don't know.) An amusing turn of events, to be sure. I considered it a great accomplishment to be mistaken for a Ukrainian woman, since they all look like models-- admittedly, an even greater accomplishment would have been to be able to understand her and answer her in Russian! Someday.

Now it's time to put my feet up and drink some tea while watching Raiders of the Lost Ark in Russian. More adventures tomorrow.