The revolutionaries of Maidan (Independence Square in the heart of Kyiv, Ukraine) built a catapult to bombard the riot police on the other side of the barricades with stones. Cossacks (medieval Ukrainian warriors), whom we used to think usually fought on horseback as unstoppable cavalry, actually fought on foot, as infantry. They were experts at surrounding and blockading towns and castles. They built improvised siege machinery called “hylyaigorod” (a “mantlet,” movable shelter) and others aimed at breaking castle gates and scaling walls.

Ukrainian protesters in homemade suits of armour. Photo: Evgeny Feldman

Now their descendants have built a catapult. The entire Maidan, and the entire Ukrainian revolution depicted in photographs, viewed on television and on the Internet, resemble a cross between a fantasy movie and an apocalyptic story from the distant future. Black smoke, burning barricades, urban revolutionaries wearing tank, construction, ski or motorbike helmets, goggles, gas masks, “dead head” skulls and monster masks… The revolutionaries clad in snowboarding outfits who move to attack the police using their snowboards as shields, hammering away a battle rhythm on empty barrels used as war drums, Molotov cocktails illuminating the darkness like comets, barricades built from snow and poured with water so that the sub-zero temperatures made them as hard as a stone wall… It looks like a sinister carnival, like ominous fiesta. And on the other side of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Mordor there are black motionless ranks, walls of rectangular shields, which from time to time get re-arranged into what ancient Romans called “tortoise [turtle] formation” in order to shield the police officers hiding behind against incoming projectiles.

Berkut: “tortoise/turtle” formation

But don’t be fooled by your own desires, dear Europe! I know, you’re telling yourselves: “It can’t be happening… It’s just some sort of futuristic Mordor, some faraway “Upper Volta” on another continent…” You say: “No, it’s this Russia facing its internal problems… So we’d better stay away, try not to annoy or disturb… Russia is strong and it will sort things out as it has always done… We dare not chip away at the parts of Russia. How would it look? Now some Kalmykia would wish to break away, tomorrow something else… With all these camels, igloos, Buddhists and deserts. Or Mordovia, speaking of Mordor… We took in those Poles and Romanians and now we a bit unhappy… Besides, these ones burn tires! We do not burn tires, because it’s not in line with our ‘going green’! We don’t waste precious gasoline hurling it (in Molotov cocktails) at the police…”

The distance from Berlin to Kiev is 1332 km. From Rome – 1500. From Paris – 1032. From Madrid is 2300 km. According to Google maps. But no map can measure and show the abandonment in which Ukraine has found itself this winter. During the Orange Revolution in 2004, the Maidan radiated joy even though the winter was as severe as now. Thousands of young people went to Ukraine from Poland to support the transformation. Our most prominent Polish politicians went there. Musicians were recording songs, artists staging solidarity happenings. Orange color was everywhere in Poland: scarves, bows, headgear, ribbons fluttering on car antennas. It seemed that the revolution was in fact a cheerful celebration. Today, when it’s all for real, not a fantasy fight but bloodshed and torture, a deafening silence fell over Kyiv’s Maidan… Even my country – so pro-Ukrainian and willing to participate in other nation’s uprisings and revolutions – waits, guesses which way it would develop, watches over.

As if these couple of EU membership- and Schengen-visa years since our accession to the EU taught us self-interest and prudence. No tears on the barricades as during the Orange Revolution. Looking back and waiting for what the rest of Europe will say. I don’t know what happened. As if we have lost our faith in the very sense of helping others. Meanwhile, there, on the Maidan, happen the things, which are by far more important and more dangerous than back in 2004. What happened? The Ukrainians have gained more faith and strength, and we lost ours? Because we are safe and well fed? We no longer shout out: “Kyiv – Warsaw common cause!”? Because there is no carnival, only the cold smell of burning tires and gas, black night, loneliness and fear: “They’ll attack… or won’t they? We’ll be dead… or won’t we? ”

REUTERS:Stringer

Europe is a “tight” continent. If, indeed, it’s a continent, not a mere peninsula. It’s a perverse and cruel feeling of being forgotten and lonely in the midst of these pressed-against-each-other territories, nations, cities. Poland already experienced total abandonment (and betrayal) in 1939. But that was a long time ago. But just remind yourself of the Balkans, surrounded by television cameras in the early 90s. Balkan nations were equally abandoned and the entire world was watching live as they were sent to slaughter. So in comparison to the events of 1939 there was registered considerable progress. Progress of perversion and cruelty.

We used to hypocritically mumble: “But these are the Balkans, it’s always been like this, they just like it.” In the case of Ukraine, it’s hard to go along this hypocrisy. Dear ladies and gentlemen, accept it: the Ukrainians are fighting there for all of us. If you think that the so-called “European values” are given to us once and for all, that this is something that you can buy and have – you are wrong! If you think this way, then it’s best to build a huge wall to protect our European peninsula from the rest of the world. Make it a sort of ghetto of complacency, virtual safety and pornographic abundance. Put guards up the walls to watch that the rest of the world is not coming to rob us. And so we’ll live like this until we die of fear, endogamy and boredom.

Gleb Garanich : Reuters, 8 February

I do not know what happened with the continent, with its energy, courage, expansiveness, curiosity, vitality. We used to wander and explore the ends of the world, we used to set sail and travel to another side of the globe in wooden shells no larger than a train car. Yes, we did many terrible things, but we also did many great things too! The entire world stared at this ridiculous tip of the large chunk of Eurasia and couldn’t take their eyes off us. Today we stand at the window and look fearfully from behind the curtain: so that nobody, heaven forbid, starts “accepting those very [European] values.” And if somebody wishes to do so, let it be as far as possible from us. Preferably in some forlorn Mordor…

ANATOLII BOIKO: AFP: Getty Images

But it will not work this way. Values have to be fought for. Not everything can be purchased. It is impossible to surround yourself with walls and guards. Like it’s not possible to seal off the entire Mediterranean coast from incoming African refugees. Similarly, we’ll not be able to seal off the entire eastern border of my country.

At the time of communism in Poland we had a sad joke: “The Soviet Union, who does it share its borders with?” The answer was: “With whom it wants…” The same is true today for Europe. Except that unlike the Soviet Union, Europe has nowhere to go. We don’t want to acknowledge that these professed-by-us (once … ?) values are equally accepted well beyond Europe’s nominal borders. We tremble at the very thought of it: “How come? It means nothing but trouble!” Getting small, shrinking, hiding behind the curtain. Obsessively counting gains and losses. Dying of fear for our possessions. For our sickening peace, obscene prosperity, disgusting complacency.

AP: Sergei Grits

Ukrainian winter of 2014 is a European disaster. Take a look at the images of ice-cold Kyiv, at the people who are ready to die for freedom and try to remember any “European” break through of the similar strength in the last few years. I remember Berlin in 1953, Budapest in 1956, Prague in 1968, Gdańsk in 1970. However, if it comes to the second part of the continent, it occurs to me that the most desperate protest against any threat to freedoms could only happen on the Internet. It’s pathetic.

Translated by Andriy Kis
Source: http://travel2ukraine.blogspot.ca