The alarm was given just after 1 a.m. on Dec. 11 as far as Ivano-Frankivsk 550 kilometers from Kyiv.
As in the capital, church bells rang and horns honked from
cars to alert this city nestled in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains that
Independence Square was under siege. Riot police and internal ministry troops had
started to descend on the square, removing barricades along their path while
gaining ground on the perplexed protesters who were initially overwhelmed by
their sheer numbers.
Although the attack was eventually repelled by morning as
the police retreated, it was the final stroke for Petro Holovetsky, 59, who
couldn’t just open his translation agency that day for business and watch the
events unfold with his 10 employees.
“I was late getting signed up to the buses leaving for Kyiv
so I bought the next available (overnight) train ticket and arrived on Friday (Dec.
13) morning,” said Holovetsky, adding that his 19-year-old daughter has been in
Kyiv for a week already.
He has since spent each night in the square, taking turns
guarding security checkpoints with others until sunrise, which is when he falls
asleep until about noon. The worst, he says, is between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., “that’s
when you really want to go to sleep.”
“And you must not overdo the walking to stay warm because
your feet will start to sweat so that’s not good in sub-zero temperatures,”
added Holovetsky. He said the best way to get through the night is to “sit next
to a fire, get warm, go for a walk, check a barricade, and rest again.”
Initially, when EuroMaidan first started on Nov. 21,
Holovetsky didn’t take it seriously, mentioning the singing and dancing that
permeated the atmosphere.
“But when we learned what the police did to them on Nov. 30
(using excessive force to clear Independence Square), it brought on a sense of devastation,”
he said. But Dec. 11 was the decisive moment.
As a veteran of the 2004 Orange Revolution – he headed a
security team of five people in Zhovtnevy Palats – Holovetsky noted a
divergence between the two protest movements.
“Nine years ago, it was about a czar (former President
Viktor Yushchenko), this time it is about an idea,” said Holovetsky, referring
to the desire of protesters to live “in a more European country, not in a mafia
state.”
He noted that security is “tighter” this time around, as is
the overall organization of logistics. More significant, according to
Holovetsky, is the presence of youth, who are more in numbers than in 2004.
“I see a look of determination in them (university students),
they know this is for their future…this could be my last chance to do something
right, but they are making it happen,” said Holovetsky.
Kyiv Post editor Mark
Rachkevych can be [email protected].
