On Nov. 21, Ukraine marks the first anniversary of the beginning of the EuroMaidan Revolution, a social protest that toppled former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. The Kyiv Post caught up on how the lives of some high-profile EuroMaidan protesters have changed since then.
Special needs volunteer faces new challenges
Life seemed to be smiling on famous EuroMaidan activist Liza Shaposhnik, 28, as she got married on May 24 on Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti. But it wasn’t meant to be, apparently.
Shaposhnik has cerebral palsy, which deformed her hands, and at EuroMaidan she had taken the only volunteer job she could – tearing off teabag tags in the field kitchen.
Her husband is 32-year-old Vitaliy Popov from Yakutiya, Russia. Both were members of the far right Right Sector party. But now, Shaposhnik is seeking a divorce.
In July, her husband dropped out of Right Sector and called their marriage the party’s public relations stunt. Shaposhnik now accuses her ex-husband of being a Kremlin spy, who infiltrated Right Sector to get information.
Artem Skoropadsky, a spokesperson for the right-wing group, denies both sets of allegations, and says that Shaposhnik’s statements are “dramatized” because she is “a very emotional girl.”
Nowadays, Shaposhnik, a native of Druzhkovka in Donetsk Oblast, stays with the Ukrainian army in the east of the country as a volunteer. “I clean the barracks and help in the kitchen,” she says. “We have to get up and fight for Ukraine.”
She hopes to get a divorce once the separatist conflict in the east is over. Her family doesn’t support her activism and views.
YouTube star shares truth about Ukraine
Yulia Marushevska, 25, a Ph. D. student at Kyiv Taras Shevchenko University, won the hearts of millions of people around the world by creating the powerful video message “I am a Ukrainian” during EuroMaidan, in which she spoke about the protest in English. It got more than eight million views.
The instant popularity made Marushevska an informal ambassador for Ukraine to the world. Foreign journalists started inviting her for interviews and activists asked Marushevska to give speeches about Ukraine abroad.
Since then, Marushevska has made at least 10 trips to Western Europe and the U.S. to give lectures and interviews about Ukraine and recent events in the country. Some of her trips were sponsored by the British billionaire philanthropist Richard Branson.
She says that many foreigners continue to misunderstand events in Ukraine. For that, she blames Russian propaganda.
“I grow tired of repeating that there are no fascists in Ukraine,” Marushevska says.
After all the travels, Marushevska has to catch up with her studies. Next year she plans to defend her thesis in Ukrainian literature.
Tortured cossack wins a seat in parliament
The life of Mykhaylo Havryliuk, a 35-year old construction worker from a village in Chernivtsi Oblast, has changed the most drastically. In less than a year he went from worker to EuroMaidan symbol to member of parliament.
In January, EuroMaidan protester Cossack Havryliuk, for his forelock hairstyle, was captured and beaten by Berkut riot police officers. The leaked video showed the police forcing him to walk naked in the snow and kicking him. It spawned a wave of rage against the police.
Havryliuk stayed calm and dignified as the officers mocked him. His face became one of the symbols of the protest and made it onto the protesters’ banners.
On Oct. 26, Havryliuk was elected to parliament in a single-mandate district as a representative of the People’s Front party led by Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
The newbie lawmaker didn’t go to college, but believes that education is not important for his new role. He considers himself a good manager.
“I used to be a builder, a foreman who supervised and organized people. People worked well under my guidance,” Havryliuk said in an interview in the Uteodyn online broadcast on Nov. 4.
Havryliuk was not reachable for comment. His spokesman, however, told the Kyiv Post that the builder-turned-lawmaker currently handles deliveries of humanitarian aid to Ukrainian soldiers who are fighting against Russia-backed terrorists in the east of the country.
Quiet life of heroic medic volunteer
Olesya Zhukovska, 21, a EuroMaidan medical service volunteer who nearly lost her life when a sniper bullet hit her in the neck on Feb. 20, now enjoys a quiet life in Ukraine’s capital.
Right after catching the round, Zhukovska tweeted “I am dying.” The tweet confused many local publications into reporting that a medical volunteer had died on the Maidan.
Zhukovska intended the tweet to be farewell words to her boyfriend Taras. The two met on Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti on New Year’s Eve.
Before the protests Zhukovska worked as a nurse in a hospital in Krements, a town in western Ukraine. Now, she is a sophomore at Kyiv Bohomolets National Medical University. She enjoys student life and dislikes press attention.
Kyiv Post staff writer Natalya Trach can be reached at [email protected]
