This
is a wonderful, personal account of the tragic events of February 20
in Kiev from Aleksey Yaroshevky, who is one of the RT presenters I
like most. Clearly the events have touched him deeply
Ukraine:
A war on more than one front
Aleksey
Yaroshevky
RT,
6
March, 2014
Well,
my friends, another one of my hellish trips to my beloved Ukraine is
over, and it’s time to draw breath and sum it up. Right after this,
I probably won’t go back to this nightmare of a topic for a very
long while.
I’ll
say right away that it’s going to be a long piece, and just like
last time, these are just my observations and impressions; there has
never been and never will be any external influence on my opinion. I
fully realize that some will agree with me and some won’t, but this
is howI, a person for whom Ukraine isn’t just another assignment,
saw and felt everything happening in Kiev and in the country.
So
I want to ask you not to take offense, since everyone is so sensitive
about this subject right now. I’m not trying to impose my opinion
or take sides. These are, again, just my observations. As they say,
FYI.
I’ll
start with the previously undisclosed details of the “Black
Thursday”
of February 20, when so much blood was spilled on the streets of Kiev
(you have already doubtless seen my video from the battleground).
I
was leaving Maidan on Wednesday night at about 1am (that is, the side
of the barricades where the police were; for the first time in one
and a half months, we got there almost without any obstacles), and
both the police and Berkut tried to tell me in various ways to be
careful on my way from the Ukraine Hotel to the Dnipro Hotel. I was
genuinely confused, and they told me, “There’s
gunfire from Maidan.”
It was just over an hour since the “truce”
between the opposition and the president had been declared.
The
“truce”
was questionable even then, even without the police talking about
gunfire. We were reporting near the “frontlines” opposite the
Khreschatyk Hotel when someone threw several Molotov cocktails from
the windows of the almost completely burnt-out Trade Unions Building.
We could hear petards and stun grenades going off and see bottles and
stones flying from Maidan. “Truce”?
No damn way, I thought. I was scheduled to go live from the parking
lot near the Ukraine Hotel at 9am. I woke up at 8am, and, catching up
on the news while brushing my teeth, saw that the situation seemed to
be calm. So I relaxed.
How
wrong I was!
A
gloomy traffic police officer stopped our car on the corner of Lipska
and Institutska St. and said, “I
won’t let you drive any further, they’ll burn your car.” “What
do you mean?”
I asked. “There’s a
truce.”
With a smirk, the officer pointed at a burnt carcass of a car flipped
over on the sidewalk. “A
truce? They burnt this car during the night, and there’s another
one over there. Walk on, but at your own risk.”
I
started walking, of course, because what risk could there be? 150m
ahead, just past the corner with Bankova St, there was a Berkut
cordon. It was Berkut, not the police or the internal troops. The
commanding officer refused to let me through for a long time, harping
on that phrase again, “There’s gunfire.” Neither my press card,
nor promises to go only as far as the Ukraine Hotel building helped
convince him. What swayed him was the guest pass of a hotel resident
that I had borrowed from my colleagues the day before.
Mayhem
in Maidan
When
they finally let me through, the first thing I saw was a Berkut
soldier on a stretcher, covered in blood, his face ruined and his arm
barely attached to his body. Yes, that’s exactly what I mean –
his arm was almost completely blown off. I still want to know what
happened to him, whether he survived or not, because his wounds were
very serious. I didn’t have time to consider what could possibly
have caused this much damage to a soldier wearing a bulletproof vest
and a helmet, and off I went for my broadcast. Several minutes before
I had to go on air, I was standing in front of the camera and my
connection with Moscow was ready. Then all hell broke loose about 50
meters behind me.
I
really want to find the recording of that live broadcast and post it
here. I was live on air, talking about (and showing) the gunfire,
obviously live ammo, and Maidan protesters launching an attack. In
the middle of my reporting a group of protesters started running my
way. There was no time to think about their intentions, and I don’t
believe they meant me any harm – they were probably just going for
the hotel’s entrance – but I noticed a grenade flying out of the
bushes in my peripheral vision. I needed to get off the air instantly
and hide. The stun grenade went off next to the parking lot right in
front of the entrance, that is, about 15 meters from where I was. You
know what happened next, and not only from me – our ill-fated live
broadcast when we were shot at by a police sniper, unarmed protesters
killed, and the president running away.
In
a separate paragraph, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to
Andrey Levin and Anton Borodavka, friends that took risks and saved
us from starving to death and losing our minds in that heated
situation. Guys, I appreciate that so much.
I
told you all this so that no one harbors any delusions: there are no
saints in this war (not to be confused with Russia’s actions in the
Crimea that everyone refers to as “war”
– I am talking about the conflict within Ukrainian society that I
voiced MY OWN opinion on earlier). A week after these events, I was
invited to BBC World radio and described what happened to Andriy
Shevchenko, a member of the oppositional Batkivshchyna party. He
replied, “Yes, I knew WE (he
meant the Maidan activists, of course) had a lot of ammo, but we
never considered actually using it. It’s a fact that the first
bullet was fired from the Maidan side, and it surprised me immensely.
I still don’t understand who gave the order or sent those people in
without shields to die.”
As a former journalist, he was shocked to hear about us almost
getting “shot by the police
by accident.”
Kiev
on February 20, 2014. (AFP Photo / Dmitry Serebryakov)
I’m
convinced that we’ll never know the whole truth behind the events
in Kiev, and people will come up with a variety of opinions and
assessments. Of course, it’s important that all the murderers are
found and punished – those who fired at the guys with shields,
those who ordered it and those who killed policemen both in Maidan
and outside it. Although, in the latter case, I very much doubt that
it will ever happen, despite (sorry for the pathos) the fact that
every human life is priceless and those who take it away must be
punished. But more importantly, neither Ukraine, nor we, who took
part in these events and saw them with our own eyes, will ever be the
same after all this bloodshed and terror.
A
lot of things about Maidan, both in the form of standing protests and
what happened on Grushevskogo/Institutska St, were right and a lot
were wrong. Soon after the protests began, I wrote that all the
reasonable skepticism towards Kiev’s EU integration initiative
notwithstanding, I wholeheartedly support the people’s desire to
live in a country where the rule of law actually works, and the
authorities can’t just do whatever they want. The Maidan protesters
were so united and sincere, it kept amazing me throughout my sojourn.
But,
for me, some lowlifes (regardless of whether they were local or not),
seizing city administration buildings is just as bad and disgusting
as a murderer and a bastard harassing officials in front of cameras.
The fate of the country I love with all my heart will probably be
determined by the country itself. There probably will be more
turbulence, and the people will have to rise up again and again to
fight against abuse of power. I think many people will agree that the
new government has minimum credibility, a fact they have been proving
since they came to power. But the Ukrainian people have to do it on
their own.
Since
the first days of the active phase of the conflict in Kiev, it was
clear to me that it’s not about fed-up people fighting their
Ukrainephobic/thieving/idiotic president; it’s just a stage for a
much more serious geopolitical struggle. Don’t kid yourselves!
Ukraine was always going to become that stage, based on its location
and history. But I really hope that in the future both Russia and the
EU leave Ukraine alone and stop fighting over it like it was a
coveted prize. Instead, they should find a way to help the nation
along the right path. Before you condemn me as an “occupation”
advocate, please read the next paragraph.
I
will not presume to judge whether the Russian government and
President Putin’s actions have been legitimate. I know the audience
is split in opinion on this: some wholeheartedly support the current
developments in Crimea, others see Putin and the Russians as
“fascists”
and “invaders,”
while some are trying to stay calm and remain neutral. I would say
there has certainly been some overreaction on Russia’s part – but
in this turmoil, pretty much every party has overreacted. Yet there
is one thing I am confident about: there is no war going on between
Russia and Ukraine – in the sense that there is no fighting and no
KIAs – and there won’t be. Russian servicemen will not fire on
Ukrainians, and vice versa.
Kiev,
February 20, 2014 (AFP Photo / Alexander Chekmenev)
Mayhem
in the media
However,
there is a different kind of war going on: a media war. It’s been
raging for some time already, and it’s at its height now. There
have been lots of lies and trumped-up fabrications peddled on either
side, complete with deliberate attempts at spreading panic among
ordinary civilians. Once the dust has settled, I hope that every one
of the news people who had a hand in fear mongering will hang their
heads in shame. But for the time being, this is what upsets me most.
With
people pointing fingers and labeling whoever they disagree with, it
is incredibly difficult to explain to them how we did our best from
day one to cover the Ukrainian crisis as it was, steering clear from
an aggressive stance as well as from too much drama. I can assure you
that in the three months that I was covering the Maidan events, NO
ONE ever instructed me on what I should say.
Some
were reluctant to believe that. A characteristic interaction took
place in the lobby of the Ukraine hotel, where a Maidan activist (a
Russian national, by the way) confronted me in public, bringing along
a Maidan field surgeon, whom I had interviewed the previous day. With
a voice recorder rolling, the activist accused me of rigging the
interview to make it sound as though the surgeon had actually
conceded that Maidan protesters were deliberately targeting their own
medics with firearms. (In reality, the surgeon, Yevgeny, had told me
the number of wounded was enormous, and that the police were shooting
people and aiming for the head.) I had to show the two of them my
script and the sound bites picked for my story, before the activist
acknowledged he had made a mistake.
Kiev,
February 20, 2014 (AFP Photo / Sergei Supinsky)
We
parted amicably enough, going as far as cracking jokes and exchanging
opinions on what the future might hold for us all. Yet this incident
left a lingering aftertaste, and here is why: I realized the tags had
already been attached, and spiteful propaganda was in full swing. The
power game between Russia and the West will inevitably run its course
someday, but the seeds of hatred and bigotry sown between large
masses of people in Russia and Ukraine by way of blatant propaganda
and deliberate lies will contaminate the relations between our two
countries for decades to come.
The
popular narrative in Russia is that Ukraine has been taken over by a
fascist junta. Ukrainians, in turn, believe that Russia hates them
and seeks to annex their eastern regions. The situation is evolving
so rapidly that it makes any prediction futile. I would probably
suggest that Eastern Ukraine might remain restless for some time,
until the new policy makers in Kiev finally learn to compromise with
their own countrymen. But I would like to caution everyone from
falling for the “war”
talk and turning it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is no need
to store canned foods and oil your Kalashnikov. And there is little
validity in obsessing over the 2008 war in South Ossetia, citing it
as proof that Russia is prone to waging war on its neighbors. There
will be no war between Russia and Ukraine, period.
I
call on every sane, rational individual to refrain from fomenting
hatred between our two nations. This might sound awfully dramatic,
but we are neighbors, friends, and brothers.
And
one last thing: I guess it is no secret that I consider Ukraine my
second home. My Grandfather had “Ukrainian”
written in his passport. I lived and worked in Ukraine for many
years, and my son was conceived in Kiev. As I’m taking my leave of
Kiev now, I shiver at the thought that I was nearly killed in the
warm and homely city that I love so much. Even if I spend the rest of
my life away from Ukraine, my heart will always go out to this
beautiful country. And even though I’m leaving it with a bleeding
heart, I’m still hopeful that I will have reason to rejoice for
Ukraine soon enough.
Glory
to Ukraine, glory to Russia, glory to ALL the heroes
Aleksey
Yaroshevsky has a twitter
account
Here
are some of his recent remarks about RT, the resignation of Liz Wahl
and remarks by Abby Martin
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