You're reading: My friendly, cold night on Maidan

I can barely feel my toes and my head cracks from the cold even though I’m wearing the warmest clothes I have. I’ve been standing in a huge queue to the heating tent at Maidan Nezalezhnosti Square for just 20 minutes, but it seems that I’ve been here forever, jumping and dancing to get warm. It is past midnight and I’ve stopped counting the cups of tea I had after the fifth one.An intellectual-looking old man tells me to stand closer to him, because as other nights spent in Maidan taught him, this way it’s warmer.

For me, Maidan Nezalezhnosti is full of familiar faces, mostly friends from college. “Today I’m here not for long, as I’m very tired: I have come to Maidan almost every day since it all started. I usually come here after work and stay till 2 a.m. or 3 a.m., and after that I do some homework. I really need some sleep,” says Iryna Hukalo, a student of Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University. Hukalo leaves Maidan at midnight.

People sleep in each other’s embrace near the fire barrels at 5 a.m. on Nov. 28 at Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv. (Anastasia Vlasova)

I’m staying though – and did, until 5:30 a.m. Overnight, there were no less than 100 people at any given time, but the numbers dwindled as the night wore on.

I want to catch up with restless Ruslana, who keeps singing, dancing and cheering the public, so I’m standing very close to the stage, which is actually just at the foot of the Independence monument. Suddenly, the security guy hands me his cup of coffee. “You need to get warm,” he says. It feels like the best coffee I’ve ever had in my life.

I’ve never been extremely patriotic but I sang the national anthem at least three times during the night with my hoarse voice and sore throat. People I’ve never met before became my friends. That’s the EuroMaidan effect. At once, an unfamiliar guy standing next to me offers me some cheese, another one gives me gum saying it’s just because he “also wants to give me something.” I treat them with tea from my thermos. Suddenly a group of people shows up and offers us some cognac to add to the tea. In a few minutes I get caught by a massive roundelay and keep dancing until my legs are exhausted.
“President Viktor Yanukovych “is going to be f***ed if he doesn’t sign the agreement,” says Petro, the security guy near the heating tent, referring to the association agreement with the European Union that Yanukovych backed out of on Nov. 21. “You see how many people are standing here. And they are all angry.”

Protesters sit inside the heating tent, eating and drinking hot tea. (Anastasia Vlasova)

Unfortunately, there is only one heating tent on Maidan tonight, and it’s not very big, so there is always a huge queue to get inside. The guard tells me that they can’t let in new people until someone is out of the tent. There is no fixed term of how long one person can stay in a tent, but women and kids get priority, of course.

To cheer those who are still waiting for their turn to warm, volunteers take hot tea outside. Everything is free.

Inside the tent, there are EU flags and religious icons. A long table hosts piles of food. While I was standing in a line, a woman brought the volunteers four packs of tea and two packs of cookies. I was told that people bring something for the protesters all the time: tea, cookies, cheese, ham, warm socks and gloves, sleeping pads, sleeping bags and blankets. Each visitor of the heating tent gets food and warm drink, sits at the table and enjoys a meal in a warm and friendly atmosphere.

Deeper into the night, fewer and fewer people stay near the stage to dance and sing. Several dozen people sleep, sitting covered with blankets near the barrels with fire, some of them sleep embracing each other. I stay by the fire and have a stranger, a guy whose name I’m too sleepy to remember, talking to me about the similarity of Ukrainians and American Indians.

Surprisingly, there are still around 70 people dancing and chanting at 4 a.m. in the morning. An hour later the hostess at the stage offers to clean up Maidan from the mess after the night. Without any doubt, the protesters start collecting garbage from the ground and putting it into garbage bags. Somebody cleverly puts on “Wake up, my darling, wake up” song by Okean Elzy. Murmuring the lyrics, people are lining up to get their breakfast of hot coffee and cookies, or making for the metro to catch the first train home, to come back the next night.

Kyiv Post photojournalist Anastasia Vlasova can be reached at [email protected].

Tips for surviving a night on Maidan Nezalezhnosti 

What to drink
Hot water with ginger, lemon and honey is better than tea. Tea gets cold very fast, also ginger acts like an antiseptic.

Where to stand
No matter how good and warm your shoes are, your legs will get cold soon after walking and standing on the granite slabs. Better stand on foam plastics or cardboard.

What to take with you 
A thermos with a hot beverage would be very useful. Also take some eye drops, because smoke from the fire irritates eyes. Moisturizing cream is vital for female protesters.