23rd March 2014 as stated in EXIF. The Bell Tower Of St Anne's Church on Krakowskie Przedmieście.
Months earlier before I snapped this, the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine was nearing its end, beginning the period of a huge transition in that country. They just forced their pro-Russian president off the office and started writing entirely new page of their history.
I’ll be honest though: even though I followed the news at the time, I had no goddamn clue how incredibly significant all of that was. I can’t say I was paying attention while Russia was annexing Crimea. Everyone is a genius in hindsight but I can't say I had foresight back then.
And the 2014 me wouldn’t believe the 2024 me if I had said to him about February 2022.
10 years ago, an unconstitutional #coup was staged in #Kiev
It symbolized the culmination of the #Euromaidan demonstrations, a succession of public protests that took place from November 2013 to February 2014, which were orchestrated by the #US and its allies.
Learn more about the facts, that the West never mentions about today’s #Ukraine.
Murders and violence against the EuroMaidan Revolution's participants were carried out by Ukrainian law enforcement officers under the orders of Ukrainian authorities and Russia's guidance, according to a conclusion by the Prosecutor General's Office, Interfax-Ukraine reported on Feb. 19.
Finally reading my history I learn that Putin followed US-supported drunk Boris Yeltsin. While Putin emerged from Yeltsin's own ranks, he was the electorate’s expectable reaction to the shock doctrine and the weak leading figure that made it all possible.
A better global power, with proper intelligence, functional think tanks and caring politicians would have seen this coming. Or did they?
This description is simply false and repeats a biased Russian narrative about the #Euromaidan. I know everyone today says “biased” and “fake”, but this on actually is. Here’s why:
In late 2013, #Ukraine president Yanukovych was expected to finally ratify the Ukraine-EU agreement, which had huge popular support due to poor economic situation and lack of rule of law (to put that lightly) for the period Ukraine remained in Russia’s Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Yanukovych led the legislative efforts on the agreements and on multiple occasions endorsed the deal with EU.
After a series of unannounced and secret talks with Putin, Yanukovych unexpectedly declared suspension of the agreement. This was the initial cause for people to start gathering on the Maidan square. Then Yanukovych made secret visit to Sochi in Russia, meeting in Putin and promised that instead Ukraine will enter an union with Russia.
The protest on Maidan gathered many young people but was entirely peaceful at that stage. On 30 November 2013 Yanukovych, likely at advice from Moscow, unrolled an extremely violent police attack on the protesters. Many people, including journalists and many young students, were severely beaten, with broken bones etc.
This level of violence would have worked perfectly in Russia, but not in Ukraine, so instead of dispersing protesters, this decision resulted in more people coming from all the country to the square, setting up self-defence teams etc. Interestingly, while November saw mostly really young people, the second wave saw mostly adults coming - really pissed off with how the government treated the kids.
Violent clashes between police and the protesters continued for all December and January. Tens of thousands of people camped on Maidan at freezing temperatures, and that probably best beats the idiotic arguments that these thousands were somehow “paid by US” to stay there. Meanwhile, Ukrainian government literally paid young hooligans titushki to kidnap, beat and kill random protesters. In mid-December Russian FSB delegation arrived to Kyiv for the first time to help Yanukovych stop the protests.
On 18 February 2014 snipers from “Berkut” special force killed over 20 people, in total 1000+ were wounded. The next day the second FSB delegation arrived in Kyiv.
On 21 February 2014 Yanukovych agreed to sign a deal with the protesters and an official meeting was held by the president and representatives from the opposition. This was an official document, signed by Yanukovych in the presence of diplomats from EU and Russia, which totally debunks the narrative of a “coup”.
On 22 February Yanuvych departed to Donetsk and Kharkiv where he was seeking support from local political parties. They however considered him so rotten and discredited that they refused. At the night of 22 February Yanukovych tried to board a private jet to fly to Moscow from Donetsk airport, but was stopped by border force.
On 24 February 2022 Yanukovych was eventually secretly evacuated by Russian special forces using helicopters which illegally crossed Ukrainian border. This debunks the narrative about Yanukovych being “forced to leave” - he tried to escape to Russia twice, on his own will.
Here’s the photo of Yanukovych and opposition leaders signing the ceasefire agreement on 21 February 2014:
Ten years have passed since Ukrainians took to the #Maidan, the main square in #Kyiv, to defend their pro-European choice. We still remember the #Euromaidan, which evolved into the Revolution of Dignity in 2013-2014, although the ongoing war with #Russia is erasing the memory of it.
"On 1 March, when it became clear that Russia had occupied #Crimea, #Ukraine appealed to its partners for help. But there was no response."
R to @EU_Commission: That courage triggered Putin's reaction – Crimea, Donbass, the full-scale invasion of 2022. Ten years of Russia's war against Ukrainian freedom.
In this struggle, heroes like Roman Ratushnyi have made the ultimate sacrifice, but their dreams live on.
Ukrainian authorities brought charges against 20 present or former officers of #Russia's #FSB for aiding Viktor #Yanukovych's security services in suppressing the #EuroMaidan.
According to the investigation, the Russian officers were present in #Kyiv between Dec. 13-15, 2013. They reportedly assisted the Security Service of #Ukraine (#SBU), then loyal to pro-Russian President Yanukovych, in creating videos and other materials aimed at discrediting pro-#EU protesters.
Oleksii Arestovych is a figure triggering contradictory emotions, but he has a talent to see things in a novel way. In a radio interview in 2016^1 he made the following observation about #Euromaidan. “Chronoclasm” (I had too look it up) is a term meaning an intervention in the course of history as result of time travel, rarely used outside of sci-fi (of which Arestovych is a huge fan):
Maidan was a chronoclasm, a breakthrough from the 25th century to us here. The system of relations that was formed there, the ideals, the energy that was there - everything points to the fact that it was a breakthrough from the future. And the people who acted there were for a moment, for these three months, illuminated by this future, living this ideal.
It doesn’t really matter here whether that was really result of literal time travel, which may be frowned at by more skeptical of us. What I believe he meant here, is that otherwise a very divided society suddenly converged towards a practically perfect self-organisation where, most importantly, their conflicting worldviews became completely secondary.
For individualist society such as Ukrainian that’s difficult to imagine, especially for an insider. If I saw it in my own Poland for example, I would definitely have to resort to time travel as the only plausible explanation. Fortunately - or unfortunately - Polish individualism is not in any way threatened and we remain properly divided 😉
Ukraine however did emerge an efficient self-organisation facing an existential threat, and it did so twice (first in 2013-2014, then in 2022). How challenging that is for any society you can only fully comprehend if you realise that every member of said society is bound by assumptions, biases, prejudices and behavioural schemes imprinted on them from their day of birth.
In case of all Slavic societies, with our rather violent history of endless invasions and civic wars, the first of these schemes is “care only for yourself and your family”, conveniently verbalised by a popular phrase “my house [is] at the edge [of the village]” (Polish: “moja chata z kraju”, Ukrainian and Russian: “моя хата скраю”). It expresses a deep feeling of not-belonging and a hope that other people’s problems can be avoided by simply minding your business.
Arestovych is actually quite preoccupied with this proverbial phrase, and occasionally used a “myhouseattheedgism” neologism to describe this social attitude. If we now return to the realisation of the socially imprinted prejudices and behavioural schemes, this explains not only why he considers Euromaidan such a exceptional event, but also why continuation of this emergent social pattern to be the greatest social challenge:
We will not be able to solve the problems that Ukraine is facing - and they are not only historical, they are biblical in scale - without the emergence of a new type of person.
#Russia massive state-funded propaganda budget resulted in a situation where they are actually reconstructing history from scratch using entirely fake "documentary" shots.
The following photos were taken in Sankt Petersburg, where state TV has reconstructed the #Euromaidan scenography for a "documentary" which will be used to support the narratives of Russian propaganda. For many Russians and Putinverstehers abroad these will become the primary source of information of these events, in the same way as just recently Russian TV filmed a whole staged "LGBT march" in Moscow, presenting it as happening in Kyiv.
This is not only limited to Ukraine: RT has recently filmed a clip pretending to be a production of #Germany AfD party... except it was entirely filmed in Russia and with Russian authors.
Be aware of this ongoing process, especially if you have any friends who tend to follow "both sides" as they will be unavoidably exposed to these sophisticated fakes.
Yurchak on how not to understand Russians' popular support (or lack of, or ambivalence towards) the war on #Ukraine.
"It’s not my job to comfort you. In fact, this is a catastrophe, including a moral one, we are all participating in a moral catastrophe. The catastrophe is not that everyone in Russia is fooled and supporting the war, but that people are simply powerless, they cannot mobilize against it, at least not yet."
It is a catastrophe, but it’s almost entirely self-inflicted. I was in #Russia plenty of times since Putin got into power: I was there during second war in #Chechnya, war in #Georgia, I was there when the first Internet censorship laws were introduced, during Bolotnaya protests, during #Euromaidan, war in #Donbass etc. All I heard from majority of Russians was continued justification of Putin, continued contempt and hatred towards everyone who dared to disagree and, most importantly, continued excuses for continued limiting of their own rights. They are powerless today because they wanted to be powerless in 2011-2012 when they happily delegated all their lives to Putin and childishly believed he will take them to the stars.
Prosecutors: EuroMaidan violence perpetrated by Ukrainian officers under Russia's guidance (kyivindependent.com)
Murders and violence against the EuroMaidan Revolution's participants were carried out by Ukrainian law enforcement officers under the orders of Ukrainian authorities and Russia's guidance, according to a conclusion by the Prosecutor General's Office, Interfax-Ukraine reported on Feb. 19.