At an unremarkable green building on Ovrutska Street, two plaques on either side of the door depict the moment that a North African revolution reached Kyiv.
At an unremarkable green building on Ovrutska Street, two plaques on either side of the door depict the moment that a North African revolution reached Kyiv.
Supporters of the Libyan rebels, who earlier this month unseated longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi, have scratched out the name of the state he used to rule with an iron fist. They have torn down portraits of the eccentric leader, tossed his Green Book into a locked storeroom and melted down his copper bust.
“The students and I took everything down,” said Ibrahim Ramron, the embassy security guard and self-proclaimed leader of the revolution in Kyiv.
Ramron on Sept. 8 took two Kyiv Post reporters on a tour of a Libyan Embassy that he described as torn apart by divided loyalties.
A former military engineer in Libya who first came to Ukraine in 1985 as a student, Ramron has worked at the embassy since 2005 in different roles.
He said only he and one other diplomat, who has since left, were in favor of the revolution. The destruction, he said, had been carried out by Libyan students and other residents of Kyiv.
His account couldn’t be verified, as no one else at the embassy was available for comment.
Inside, the halls and offices were empty and quiet.
Portraits of the former leader had been removed in haste following his fall. Wall after empty wall bore only the grimy outlines of where the portraits once hung. All that remained were innocuous tourism pictures and the occasional quote from the Qur’an.
On the embassy’s second floor, tucked into a nook, stood a simple white pillar upon which now sits a wilting evergreen in a wicker basket. The unimpressive plant had replaced a large, bronze bust of Gadhafi. Revolutionary protesters within the embassy recently snatched the bust and then hanged it in a mock lynching before melting it.
Ramron, sporting a freshly grown beard, proudly showed off the savaged last remaining Gadhafi portrait in the embassy’s possession. Ramron himself had gouged out the dictator’s eyes and teeth and crisscrossed the canvas with a sharp tool.
In posing for a photo, Ramron placed his foot next to Gadhafi’s face, one of the strongest insults in Arab culture.
As Ramron, who is in his late 40s, strutted around the embassy, he continued to remove any last signs of the old regime, tearing down remaining vestiges of officialdom, including a large eagle emblem that was once Libya’s coat of arms, which he tossed to the ground and kicked under a table.
Outside, the tricolor flag of Libya’s new government, raised on Aug. 22, flew over the embassy. Grinning Libyan youths posed for photos next to it, giving the thumbs up.
Ramron works out of the ramshackle security guard’s office at the embassy entrance. Libya’s new revolutionary “Free Libya” news program was blaring on the office television as empty coffee cups sat on the desk.
A white, silk sheet hung loosely over a couch, reads “Libyans are not rats, Libyans are patriots and brave people.”
For the moment, the embassy is eerily devoid of any symbols. Those of Gadhafi have gone, but nothing from the new authorities has been erected in its place.
“There are no symbols yet of the revolution because they are not in favor of it,” said Ramron, pointing toward the office of the ambassador.
Kyiv Post staff writers Rina Soloveitchik can be reached at [email protected] and Will Fitzgibbon can be reached at [email protected].
