Two years after the mass killings in Kyiv, when police snipers gunned down dozens of EuroMaidan protesters on one of the capital’s central streets, thousands gathered on Maidan Nezalezhnosti on Feb. 20 to commemorate those killed.
Around 100 protesters and a dozen policemen were killed from Feb. 18 to Feb. 20, 2014, as
the EuroMaidan Revolution reached its violent climax. The protesters who were
killed are known in Ukraine as the Heavenly Hundred.
During the commemoration ceremony on Feb. 20, about 50 activists of the Revolutionary Right-Wing Forces, an ultranationalist umbrella group, entered Kozatsky Hotel on Maidan Nezalezhnosti,set up their headquarters and held a meeting there. Though this looked like seizure of the building, a representative of the hotel told the Kyiv Post the hotel had permitted the demonstrators to meet there. The hotel’s management refused to speak on the record, however.
The Revolutionary Right-Wing Forces called for releasing political prisoners, impeaching the president and firing the prime minister. They scheduled a major rally on Maidan for 5 p.m. on Feb. 21.
Protesters also brought firewood to Maidan Nezalezhnosti, started burning fires and announced plans to set up a tent camp. Demonstrators used billboards with pictures of killed EuroMaidan demonstrators to set up two barricades and block Khreshchatik Street.
When protesters tried to set up a tent, the police attempted to block them, and minor scuffles broke out. The scene looked surreal – real-life clashes with the police with video footage of the killing of protesters during the EuroMaidan Revolution projected to a nearby building in the background brought the feeling of deja vu.
However, the police eventually withdrew, and two tents were set up on Maidan Nezalezhnosti.
Right-wing activists also threw rocks at offices of Russia’s Sberbank and Alfa Bank and an office of Ukrainian tycoon Rinat Akhmetov’s SCM group.
Meanwhile, thousands came from around Ukraine to honor the slain activists, laying flowers
in front of makeshift memorials and photos, lighting candles, praying, and
singing songs and the national anthem.
Instytutska
Street, which was the main site of the slaughter of the protesters, was thronged
by EuroMaidan veterans and relatives of the Heavenly Hundred. They gathered on
the Maidan, slowly walking up the street with bouquets of flowers, heading to
the spot where most of the murders were committed.
Residents
of Ukraina hotel, located on the hill of Instytutska, watched the crowds from
the windows of their rooms.
At the top
of the street, near the upper entance to Khreshchatyk metro station, priests from
several confessions prayed for the souls of the Heavenly Hundred activists.
French citizen
Annick Bilobran-Karmazyn was one of those walking up the street, with a friend,
holding flags on large flagpoles with a sign reading “France” on one of them. Bilobran-Karmazyn,
who has Ukrainian roots in Ternopil Oblast, helped EuroMaidan activists by
delivering medical aid to the protesters, and worked as president of the
Association of Descendants of Ukrainian Volunteers in the French Foreign
Legion. On the first day of mass killings on Feb. 18, she was at the Maidan
with other activists, and she now comes every year to commemorate the events.
Besides
portraits with chrysanthemums and candles, there were also several stone
monuments for activists killed on Instytutska Street. The memorial to Maksym
Shymko is one of them – with a helmet and sword made of granite. With a crowd
of others, Shymko’s parents and friends came to visit it exactly two years
after his killing.
Shymko was
a member of the Maidan’s 4th Cossack self-defense company, guarding the
perimeter of the square during the Revolution, his mother Zoya Shymko said.
When the conflict escalated on Feb. 18, he was at home in Vinnytsia,
celebrating his father’s birthday. “He didn’t even eat the cake,” Shymko said,
recalling her son’s final departure from home with tears.
Maksym
didn’t tell his parents that he planned to go to Maidan again, as Zoya had
begged him not to go. But while watching a live stream from EuroMaidan on
television on Feb. 19, 2014, she noticed a person in a balaclava and black hat
with a familiar posture and walk. Her younger son Pavlo told Zoya to call and
check whether it was Maksym. The man in balaclava picked up the phone. “How did
you find me here?” Maksym asked. “I’d find you anywhere,” his mother answered.
After he
was killed on Feb. 20, Maksym’s was initially among the unidentified bodies,
and his parents didn’t find any people who saw him before his death. “He said
that Maidan was a special crowd, it was a country within a country, where
everyone knows what to do,” Zoya recalled.
Zoya and
her husband hugged and shook hands with other parents of Heavenly Hundred
members returning from the brow of the hill on Instytutska Street – the main
site of the killings. Volodymyr Holodnyuk was also among them, the father of
Ustym, one of those killed on the morning of Feb. 20. Ustym had been wearing a
blue helmet, similar in color to those worn by United Nations peacekeepers.
Zoya Shymko
said that criminal cases on the murder of her son and other protesters had been
sent to court, and that they were waiting for them to proceed.
Meanwhile,
President Petro Poroshenko met with the families of the Heavenly Hundred activists
in the morning on Feb. 20. “Nobody will avoid responsibility. This is not
revenge,” he said. “Security officials should never ever use weapons against the
Ukrainian people. Ukraine must remain a democratic state forever.”
The faces
of the Heavenly Hundred could be seen on large billboards placed in front of
the monument to independence on the Maidan. Later in the day, activists moved
the billboards and placed them in a row in the road, blocking traffic on
Khreshchatyk. The two parts of Maidan Nezalezhnosti were then connected with
each other in an informal pedestrian zone – as it had been before current Kyiv
Mayor Vitali Klitschko decided to open Khreshchatyk to traffic on weekends.
While many
Ukrainian citizens are deeply disappointed with the present government and the
unpunished murders of the Heavenly Hundred, Lviv citizen Andriy Konyk said he believes
there is a bright future for Ukraine. As a member of the 2nd self-defense
company and a constant participant in the EuroMaidan Revolution, returned to
the Maidan with his wife, recalling the events of two years ago.
“I thought
it would be exactly how it is, it’s not that I didn’t expect this,” he said of
the current events in the government and the changes that have taken place after
the Revolution. “The people who took power were not the ones who were standing in
the Maidan. They just swapped seats.”
But he said he thought that the
events after the Maidan, even the annexation of Crimea by Russia and the war in
eastern Ukraine, were generally positive, as Ukraine has become a more consolidated
nation and now has an army. “Those in
power… I don’t think they have long – and then everything will be fine,” he
said.
Kyiv Post
staff writer Yuliana Romanyshyn can be reached at [email protected]. Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov contributed to this report.
