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Tag: maidan

  • Maidan: one year on

    Andrey Kurkov, author of ‘Death and the Penguin’ and Vice-President of Ukrainian PEN, reports back on his country’s revolution and counter-revolution, and how despite diplomatic stalemate and all-out war, the people do not regret attempting to take their fate into their own hands

    Translated from the Russian by Amanda Love Darragh

    The first anniversary of the Maidan protests fell shortly after the declaration of the ‘second’ Minsk ceasefire, on 12 February. This ceasefire, like the previous one, was ushered in to the roar of exploding missiles. Not along the entire frontline this time, admittedly, but at certain points where the separatists had planned their advance. President Poroshenko made a brief but significant appearance on a dark, damp evening in Kiev – on Institutskaya Street, which is still closed to traffic, and which not so long ago ran with the blood of protestors killed by snipers – and then a symphony orchestra played Mozart’s Requiem. The whole country seemed to be standing still, with tears running down her face.

    A year has passed. Those who were killed during the Maidan protest became Heroes of Ukraine (posthumously). Many of those who survived went to Donbass as volunteers, to defend the country’s territorial integrity. Many are still fighting. During the course of the conflict some even decided to become professional soldiers or police officers. Just as military operations began in Eastern Ukraine the country began to implement a programme of reforms, starting with the police force. The police reforms are being spearheaded by a young Georgian woman, Eka Zguladze, who has been appointed First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs. She is the one credited with successfully tackling corruption in the Georgian police force at the beginning of Mikheil Saakashvili’s presidency. Saakashvili, now the former President of Georgia, is also here in Ukraine, tasked with overseeing reforms. But progress is slow and subtle, while the ‘eastern front’ endures continual military operations day and night, with scant regard for the ceasefire. The fighting, the bombing raids and the funerals of those killed in the conflict make it all but impossible for many Ukrainians who took part in Maidan or sympathised with protestors to look back and see things clearly: how far has Ukraine come this past year? What has been achieved?

    If you ask people during the course of a conversation what they think about Maidan now, it usually takes them a while to reply. ‘Maidan’ is history. It has been ‘pushed back’ – first by the annexation of Crimea, then by the unsuccessful attempt to incite armed uprisings against the government in Kiev throughout the south-east of the country, from Donetsk to Odessa and Pridnestrovie, and finally by the gradual deterioration of the situation in Donbass to a state of war – a war that wouldn’t be happening were it not for the tens of thousands of tons of Russian missiles and mines making their way into Ukraine, were it not for the volunteers, the mercenaries, the regular and reserve army officers, coming from all over Russia to fight in Ukraine.

    It’s impossible to predict how and when Putin’s war against Ukraine will end. Every now and then European leaders promise not to ‘abandon’ Ukraine, but they don’t want to ‘abandon’ Russia either; they are already suffering from the economic sanctions they themselves have imposed. At the same time European politicians understand that if Putin manages to destroy Ukraine – both economically and politically – he won’t stop there.

    Today, when I ask people in Kiev if they would have gone to Maidan in 2013 if they had known where it would lead, they pause before answering, but most of them say yes. ‘We had no alternative!’ they explain. ‘Yanukovych had already sold Ukraine to Putin, and that’s why he turned his back on Europe! Yanukovych used the threat of rapprochement with Europe to blackmail Putin. If Maidan hadn’t happened, then we would no longer have an independent Ukraine.’

    I have my own vivid memories of Euromaidan. Not of the tragedy it became and on account of which it ultimately succeeded, but rather of the spirit of the Ukrainian people, their desire to influence the fate of their own country and their readiness to take action.

    Now the word ‘Maidan’ has acquired new relevance – there have been calls for a third Maidan protest, with the aim of overthrowing the new government. Next there will be calls to take direct action against the war, against mobilisation, against everything that the new President and Cabinet of Ministers are doing. The new government is responding to this threat by attempting to introduce internet censorship and stricter control over the content of political talk shows on TV. But even Yanukovych was unable to subject Ukraine to the Russian model of total control over society through censorship and the judicial system. The majority of Ukrainians know perfectly well who stands to benefit most from a third Maidan; on this basis a third Maidan seems considerably less likely than a third ‘Minsk ceasefire’.

    The fact of the matter is that a third ‘Minsk ceasefire’, which will be possible only after the second ceasefire is officially acknowledged to be defunct and the country suffers several more months of bloody and devastating warfare, will say less about Ukraine than about her Western comrades-in-arms – the European Union and the United States. It will be a verdict on their indecision, on their reluctance to take more effective economic, financial and diplomatic steps to stop the Russian Federation sending arms, men and machinery to Donbass, without which military operations would never have begun.

    Andrey Kurkov’s book Ukraine Diaries, translated by Sam Taylor, is available to buy through our bookseller partner Foyles.

    Amanda Love Darragh’s translation of The Diary of Lena Mukhina is also available through Foyles.

  • The apricot border with Russia, or separatism on Skype

    With the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, poet and dramatist Liubov Iakymchuk writes for PEN Atlas in an exclusive dispatch about saboteurs, families divided, Russia’s exporting of fear, and the new resolve of the people.

    Translated from the Ukrainian by Steve Komarnyckyj

    Here, in Ukraine, we follow the latest forecasts of the provocations from Russia as closely as we used to follow the weather reports. We’ve given up watching TV series and just look at the news, which has become like a dystopian novel. Every day here feels like a year, but we are getting smarter as well as older. We have learned to be vigilant and all our attention is focused on the border. At last we have realised that the boundary between us and Russia exists.

    There is one weird thing in all of this. If you cross the Eastern border of Ukraine, which is brimming with plantations of apricot trees, and enter Russia, you notice that there are far fewer apricot trees in the country that you are entering. The apricot trees define the territory more clearly than any border guards or crossing points, separating our own from foreign ground. It is as if they show us that this border takes us to another world, where there is only a weak connection between people and reality. Where people believe the television when it says that everyone loves Putin. However, in Angela Merkel’s words, the Russian President has lost his grip on reality.

    They don’t let every Ukrainian across this ‘apricot’ border now, especially not journalists. At best, those rash and brave enough to cross might be interrogated for five hours or more and then released, like in the case of the journalists from the Ukrainian TV station 5 Kanal. In the worst case scenario, those who make this crossing might simply disappear. At least that’s the fear spreading throughout these border areas.

    On the other side, where there are no apricots, the Russians have established military encampments and field hospitals, 50 km from the border. A huge Russian military force is gathered there; they reconfigure them occasionally and the numbers of personnel vary, but not by much. There are no exact figures but it’s rumoured that there are hundreds of thousands.

    Ukrainian citizens live on this side of the border with its abundance of budding apricot trees. People are compelled to live with the daily fear of the ‘contagion’ of military personnel on the border, this abscess which grows daily, which might push through the boundary and turn into war. All normal people here want to avoid this, of course. Even here in Donetsk, Kharkiv and Luhansk, where there was always a low level of civic activism, people go to anti-war protests in bigger numbers than during the Euromaidan. The common enemy has compelled a usually passive population to rise up and we probably need to thank our foe for that.

    My mother’s cousin, who lives near the Russian side of the border, asked my parents, who live close to the border on the Ukrainian side, ‘Isn’t it time you fled Ukraine?’ My parents found these words laughable, a consequence of the hatred for Ukrainians that is preached in Russia. The result of this cultivated antipathy is that three quarters of Russians would support the Kremlin in the event of a war breaking out with Ukraine. Perhaps our Russian relatives are ready to support this war too, perhaps they will be delighted when bombs drop on Ukraine where they were born. This cultivated fear is meant to divert the attention of Ukrainians and allow Russia to send troupes of provocateurs into the east of Ukraine. These people arrange skirmishes, support their own self-proclaimed governors, and ultimately try to amputate this part of Ukraine. The Russian army is massing by the border and the men in green who may be Russian intelligence troops or local militia have begun appearing in the streets of east Ukrainian towns.

    A war with Ukraine is supported by 74% of the people in Russia. The awareness of such a statistic is enough to drive you mad, and many people have gone mad, including those on the Ukrainian side, and their symptoms are distinctly Putinesque. The Donetsk separatists, who are instructed by the leading Kremlin political scientist, Aleksandr Dugin, have already noted down what they need to do to make sure Donbass becomes Russian. The key points of their plan are as follows: don’t go to work, disrupt the Ukrainian presidential elections, take up arms, seize power locally, and open the eastern borders. This is so Russians can ‘save’ Ukrainians from themselves and restore the dictator Yanukovych to power. So the Kremlin trains separatists via Skype and, I suspect, terrorists as well. Neither European nor American sanctions will affect the pace of events; they will only reinforce the creation of an image within Russia of America and Europe as foes.

    One of the worst things about this is that family relationships are being ruined on different sides of the ‘apricot’ border. This may be endured and healed over in time. The worst aspect of the situation is that the Russian aggressor, who has for long enough held their fellow citizens in fear, is managing to extend this terror to Ukrainians. Fear and terror, the satellites of the Russian empire, grow like tumours, longing to occupy all the space that can be occupied, and transform everything into a cancerous growth. The most pervasive fears on the Ukrainian border within the Russian-speaking population are the fear that the Russian language may be prohibited, the fear of the mythical ‘banderites’ (Ukrainian nationalists who form a fictitious internal enemy) and the fear that there may be a Maidan tax (but no one really knows what this might be). These fears are ruining people’s ability to consider things right.

    However, fear can affect other people differently, sometimes even positively. It summons up a feeling of unity with one’s people against an external enemy. Even though the east of Ukraine has been relatively passive in the past, it is not without hope and action now. The fear of war provokes not only the usual chat in the kitchen but also draws people out to demonstrate in city streets and squares, becoming visible like the blossoming apricot trees on the Ukrainian border.

     

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    Liubov Iakymchuk is a Ukrainian poet and dramatist who was born in Pervomaysk, Luhansk Province in 1985. After graduating from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy she worked as a radio broadcaster, screenwriter, and independent journalist. She is the author of such collections of poetry as U Chotyrokh Stinakh (Within Four Walls) and ​Yak MODA (How FASHION). She has won several poetry prizes notably the international Slovyanska poetychna premiya (Slavic poetry prize). The Anglo-Ukrainian music project Afrodita was created on the basis of her verses: http://www.olesyazdorovetska.com/index.php/ensembles/78-aphrodite

     

  • World War III: a dress rehearsal

    In another exclusive dispatch from Ukraine, Andrey Kurkov describes the atmosphere of tension and surreality in Kiev and Crimea, the schizophrenia of the political situation, and the ominous absence of birds before the arrival of war 

    At five o’clock on the morning of Tuesday 4 March, I was expecting the start of World War III. Five o’clock was the time that Putin had scheduled for the storming of Ukrainian military units in Crimea. The Ukrainian troops were given a choice: the surrender of their weapons and themselves or the start of military action. I am proud that Ukraine’s soldiers and officers didn’t surrender. In fact, like the participants in EuroMaidan, they were prepared to die. But there’s always one traitor and this one was the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Navy, who had gone over to the Russian Army on the very day he was appointed. There’s no need to worry about him. He’ll get a Russian passport and pursue his career in the Russian Army. He may even become a State Duma deputy or a member of Russia’s upper house Federation Council. Russia needs people like this. Ukraine does not.A little later that same day, at around ten in the morning, there was a report that Yanukovych had died of a heart attack. The report has not been confirmed and so Russia now has two high-ranking traitors: Rear Admiral Berezovskiy and ex-President Yanukovych, who has asked Putin to conquer the Ukraine that kicked him out. For all my love of fantasy and surrealism, I feel helpless in the face of Europe’s most recent history.Meanwhile, it was foggy outside. A thick, milky fog. At seven in the morning, a man of around sixty, too lightly dressed for the weather, entered the little square on the opposite side of the road. He crumbled a bread roll on the edge of the square where there are always dozens of pigeons. This time, he sprinkled the crumbs onto empty ground. There wasn’t a single pigeon anywhere around. I was astonished, checked out the surrounding area from the window and was satisfied there were no pigeons. Just for a moment, I thought this was a very bad sign. After all, I still didn’t know that the war hadn’t started. Another ten minutes, however, and the pigeons turned up, and a normal, peaceful morning in Kiev got under way.I still can’t believe all the troubles are over. And this despite the fact that I’ve always been an optimist. I’m still trying to understand what’s been happening over the past few weeks and is still happening now. I have no questions about anything to do with EuroMaidan. The present reality of Russian-Ukrainian relations, however, is a sad conundrum. While Russian troops were smashing navigation equipment at the Ukrainian airbases they had seized and blockading Ukrainian military units, the Ukrainian government, its legitimacy not recognised by Russia, was transferring payments for gas to Gazprom almost every day. Ukrainian goods passed unimpeded through Russian customs even though, before the start of military action in Crimea, every day had brought new problems for Ukrainian exports to Russia. Perhaps the permutations of politics sometimes resemble both schizophrenia and a sophisticated mind-game at one and the same time. So far, I haven’t a clue. Although, the simplest explanation of what’s happening could be a highly rational and dispassionate policy on the part of Ukraine’s new leaders, carrying on ‘as normal’ while preparing for the worst-case scenario.Still, while the political experts write about politics and politicians, writers write about life. And it’s the little things that make up life. The other day, en route to see my Kiev publisher, who lives, like me, in the centre of Kiev, I noticed two state traffic police cars and several police officers armed with AK assault rifles at a crossroads near Kiev University. And this ‘little thing’ lifted my mood. I’ve only seen police officers in central Kiev a few times in recent days. They were patrolling the streets with People’s Self Defence representatives. No, Kiev has not descended into chaos. Life seems entirely normal and only the appearance of the occasional passerby in a flak jacket suggests that getting back to normal is still some way off.One evening recently, on March 3, I visited my publisher at home. We were eating, drinking and trying to talk but the conversation was constantly being interrupted and a deadly silence would ensue. The publisher, Petr Khazin, kept trying to put the TV on so that we could follow the news but his wife and I wouldn’t let him. The black box of the disconnected TV set psyched us out too. We already knew about the Russian troops’ ultimatum to Ukraine’s military units. We knew about the assault set for five in the morning. That must have been why all our attempts to talk about peaceful topics were doomed to failure. When I took the same route home past Kiev University, the armed police officers and their patrol cars had gone. The streets were dark, damp and quiet. I went to bed at two in the morning and woke again at six to find out whether the war had started. As it turned out, it hadn’t. I rushed to give my children the good news but they already knew. They’d been up earlier than me – to find out whether they had any future in Ukraine.

    About the author

    Andrey Kurkov, Ukrainian writer and novelist was born in St Petersburg in 1961. Having graduated from the Kiev Foreign Languages Institute, he worked for some time as a journalist, did his military service as a prison warder in Odessa, then became a film cameraman, writer of screenplays and author of critically acclaimed and popular novels, including the cult bestseller Death and the Penguin. His latest novel, The Gardener from Ochakov was published by Harvill Secker last year.

    About the translator

    Melanie Moore has been translating Russian in all its forms for more than 25 years. Her translation of The Little Man by Liza Alexandrova Zorina was published by Glas earlier this month. She also translates from French.

    Additional information

    To find out more about the situation in Ukraine, and the poetry and literature of the country, English PEN, the Dash Cafe, the British Ukrainian Society present the work of Ukrainian poet Ihor Pavlyuk. Ihor’s work paints an extraordinary and complex picture of Ukraine and we will use it as inspiration to begin a conversation about the country today. Featuring the haunting and soulful music of Olesya Zdorovetska and a panel chaired by Dash Artistic Director Josephine Burton with Journalist Annabelle Chapman, translator Steve Komanyckyj and Ihor himself, this will be a celebration of Ukrainian voices that can gives us a unique perspective on the current political situation.