You're reading: Women play integral roles at EuroMaidan

She walks carefully on the iced ground of Hrushevskoho Street in Kyiv, the epicenter of Ukraine’s now bloody protest. Trying not to fall over cobblestones covered in a gray mix of snow and ash, she holds something in her hands as close to her heart as she can…A baby girl. Two months old.

“I am here because it means that one more person is
here. Or, well, two,” smiles Kyivan Anna Kiriushkina, 35. Her daughter has no
name yet, but already has some revolutionary experience. She was born
on Nov. 21, the day pro-European protests began.

“It is really not safe here with the baby! Leave,” a
man says to Kiriushkina.

She nods and says, “I am not
going to stay here for long now.”

Kyivan Anna Kiriushkina, 35, comes to the protest at Hrushevskoho Street with her 2-months-old daughter on. Jan. 22, even though the spot has become dangerous due to continuous clashes between riot police and protesters.

About a half hour later, the fight resumed and police
began using tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets and the protesters were
pushed back to European Square. It was the third day of the violent clashes
that erupted on Jan. 19.

“This is my weapon,” says Tetyana Starenka, a
43-year-old Kyiv housewife, knocking an old cast-iron frying pan against a lamp
post.

Inna Taran, 18, looks at the stage of Euromaidan, says she was among beaten students on Nov. 30 and ensures she is not going to give up.

Starenka has been an active
participant of EuroMaidan protest since the very first days.

“First my daughter went out
and then I did, but today I locked her at home. I’ve put on her boots. That
will keep her home,” she says with a laugh.

The woman says she doesn’t have the strength and
health to fight, but women can help as well.

“Women can cook and bring food
here, just like I did on the first night of the fight at Hrushevskoho Street.
Or they can just stay here for moral support, because everyone on this side is
a hero,” she says.

Protester Oleksandr Tsvirkun, 40, says there is no way
the resistance could go on without women, adding that most of them don’t need
any special care.

“You know our girls, it is
hard to catch them… they wouldn’t go defend men during the attack,” he
laughs. “They bring food, work in medical aid centers, but most of all support
us morally with their charming smiles.”

However, Starenka says the burning desire to help
doesn’t mean she’s not scared and admits she does fear for herself and her
daughter. “But most of all I fear to live in a country like this,” she says.

Other women say they’re fearless, too.

“I am no longer afraid. I used
to be, but living in fear is worse than death,” says Valentyna Bilan, 49, a
Kyiv housewife and mother of two children.

Valentyna Bilan stands next to the barricades on the morning of Jan. 22.

On the morning of Jan. 22 she
stands in the middle of the crowd at Hrushevskoho Street, wrapped up in an
embroidered tablecloth, and holds a dirty plastic bag. The day before she was
shot in the leg with a rubber bullet, but says physical pain was nothing
compared to her tortured soul.

“I was packing stones in this
bag to bring them closer to the fire line, then a journalist came to ask me for
an interview and within minutes we both got shot,” she says and her eyes fill
up with tears.

“But those,” she points at the
police line behind the barricades, “they also have mothers and these mothers
should have been here days ago, crying, shouting, begging, and doing whatever
it takes to stop them! Why, why are they not here,” she cries out.

And she did prove her desperation just an hour later.
When riot police attacked protesters, pushing the crowd down to European
Square, Bilan was one of those left behind and accidentally witnessed police
beating an old man.

“They were beating him on his
head with sticks and with their feet, and they were filming it. I couldn’t
stand it. I fell on my knees and begged them to kill me instead of him and they
didn’t refuse, one of them hit me on my ribs,” she explains.

“My ribs are not broken,
unlike my heart,” she adds.

Broken hearts seems to be what all Kyiv protesters
have in common.

Inna Taran is just 18 and already an active protester.
She looks frustrated as she sits in the café at Independence Square warming up
after spending an afternoon at Hrushevskoho Street.

Her big hazel eyes fill with
tears as she talks about how the protest has changed her.

“You know, my friends dreamed
to go to Oxford or build a career and I’ve always just wanted a family and
three children, and even thought of names for them. But they just ruined my
dream on Nov. 30,” she says, referring to the night police violently
dispersed peaceful protesters from Independence Square.

Taran was among the those
beaten that night. After that she had to undergo surgery to remove part of one
of her kidneys, due to the beating.

“I still have another one, so I can afford being
here,” she smiles bitterly.

Taran says she has been coming
to the protest every day since she left the hospital. “God knows I have never
hated anyone, but now I do and I do so hard,” she says.

The young woman believes that
women should be standing in the front lines, and says she would do it herself.

“If I don’t get beaten,
someone else will in my place. But what makes me better than anyone else at the
fire line?” she says.

Kyiv Post staff writer Daryna
Shevchenko can be reached at
[email protected].