Ukrainian Sviatoslav Yurash decided to cut short his semester of study in Kolkata, India, when the EuroMaidan protests broke out and return to his hometown of Lviv. When he watched on TV as police tried – but failed – to forcibly disperse demonstrators on Dec. 10, he decided to go to Kyiv and become actively involved.
Now, the 17-year-old Yurash, an international relations major at the University of Warsaw, is commanding a group of about 60 public relations volunteers who are translating and pumping out information in several languages about EuroMaidan.
The operation is headquartered in the protester-occupied Trade Unions building on Independence Square, which has become the official Headquarters of National Resistance and nerve center of the anti-government protest movement that began on Nov. 21.
In five languages – English, French, German, Italian and Polish – Yurash’s group, comprised of native Ukrainians, diaspora and Western expatriates, is busy writing, translating, sourcing and posting information on an official website and social media accounts.
The information comes with a pro-EuroMaidan spin, of course, something they regard as essential to counteracting propaganda and falsehoods from the Ukrainian and Russian governments. But Yurash says the group tries to verify the information as much as possible and pick only reliable sources.
When he arrived in Kyiv in early January, Yurash, a tall and slender young man who works in the second-floor Trade Unions press center, was transfixed by what he saw.
“Revolutionary Kyiv has an interesting allure to it,” he explained. “I love Kyiv, I see Kyiv as being full of possibilities, full of potential for any young person. But right now it’s also full of chaos.”
Still, that chaos, he says, is helping to forge what he and others involved in the protests hope to be a better future for Ukraine. Yurash admits, though, that he is not sure what that future will look like. But he wants to play a part in creating it.
In early January, he received permission from the Trade Union building’s three rotating commandants – one from each opposition party – to start EuroMaidanPR, the volunteer press relations group. Besides disseminating information about the revolution, the volunteers help connect foreign media with people on the ground in Kyiv and elsewhere in the country.
Almost immediately, Yurash said, volunteers began pouring in. A Belarusian man offered to translate news from Russian to English, as did a Russian opposition politician who briefly set up camp on Independence Square.
Western expatriates offered to edit translated texts before publishing them to the group’s many online platforms.
Another, Alya Shandra, joined the group nearly full-time after spending winter holidays in Denmark to do a bit of it all. The multilingual 29-year-old has been involved nearly from the start, volunteering in her off time to write press releases, translate news into English and publish information on EuroMaidan PR’s Twitter, Facebook and WordPress websites. Often times the long work days inside the Headquarters of National Resistance means she can’t make it home. Sometimes she has worked through the night or slept in a makeshift bed on the floor of the building.
“I joined this team because I couldn’t just stand and watch what was happening in my country,” Shandra told the Kyiv Post. “I wanted to be more involved (in the protest movement), and I was looking for something where I could use my professional abilities. I speak English, so my friend from Denmark suggested I do this.”
One of the challenges of her job, Shandra explains, is trying to combat messages filtered through the many government-controlled news organizations in Ukraine and Russia, and others disseminated by foreign media that have focused their attentions on the more radical side of the protest movement, spreading messages that it is dominated by anti-Semitic, far-right groups.
Many observers, including some Western journalists, she said, “are unshakable in their opinions that this is a fascist revolt.”
“That is so frustrating. Sometimes I don’t know what to do,” she added, offering an anecdote about a Canadian television news crew that came to Kyiv to do a piece on “the radical protesters.”
“We helped them speak to Praviy Sector,” she said, referring to the militant group Right Sector, which occupies the fifth floor of the Trade Unions building and has been at the frontlines in clashes with riot police. “But we also suggested doing a piece on the people working in the field hospitals. And it turned out to be a fantastic piece. They loved it.”
While the news they report isn’t always positive, the group tries to remain optimistic.
“Pessimism is normal. But optimism is increasing (among the protesters), and it’s showing us that we must continue this fight, so that our hopes can become a reality,” Yurash said. “If you got to the fifth floor and you speak to the Right Sector, then you’ll see that we have a problem, which will appear if we win. But we must focus on the moment, and taking down the greater evil: Yanukovych.”
Here are some links to EuroMaidanPR
https://www.facebook.com/euromaidanpr
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPR
http://euromaidanpr.wordpress.com/
Kyiv Post editor Christopher J. Miller can be reached at [email protected].
