Michael Willard: Cautious optimism in Ukraine
Coming from West Virginia and at my age (68), I never thought I would end up in a war zone, a bloody conflict that claimed 82 lives Feb. 20th in Kyiv at and near a place called simply “the Maidan” (or Independence Square). I’m a writer, not a warrior.
However, on that day, mostly young people wearing motorcycle helmets and with sticks, stones, and Molotov cocktails turned back a repressive regime, sent corrupt President Viktor Yanukovych into hiding, and launched the reform of a country.
But Ukraine’s freedom is not secure. Last week, Russia invaded the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, which has been part of Ukraine since 1954.
The hope is that this or further incursions by Russia in East Ukraine will not light the fuse leading to civil war.
For nearly 20 years, I have lived five minutes uphill from Maidan, with the exception of two years in Moscow. I own businesses in Kyiv, Moscow and Istanbul. I have two-teenagers (one living with me) and a daughter in college here. I’m called “a permanent resident.”
The morning of the Maidan massacre we awoke to sirens, numerous explosions and dense smoke. Previously, my wife Olga and I had spent many hours visiting the tent city encampment on the square, each time bringing blankets, food and author profits from my latest novel (“Urainia: A Fable”) which I had pledge to support the fighters on Maidan.
Some of the people with whom we had met were killed that morning. The youngest slain was 17 and the oldest 65. Most were killed by sharp-shooting snipers. Some of the dead were laid out in front of a hotel adjoining the square, next to a closed McDonald’s.
I have seen the aftermath of war in Bosnia in 1996. I witnessed the results of death squads in a guerilla war in El Salvador in the early 1980s. I experienced the peaceful but ill-fated Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004. Nothing could prepare me for this.
The weekend after the massacre, we made the decision to travel to my wife’s parents to deliver our youngest daughter, age 13, from being so close to the action. Two other daughters live across the Dnipro River and seem far from danger.
About 40 miles out of town we ran into barricades manned by young fighters with big sticks but bigger smiles. At one barricade, a middle-aged man with gold teeth looked in our car and joked, “You don’t happen to have Yanukovych (the missing president) in there, do you?”
Nope, just our daughter, I replied. The disgraced president later surfaced in Russia, and reportedly has purchased a $52 million “cottage” on the outskirts of Moscow. He gave a much lampooned — by Russians and Ukrainians — news conference claiming to still be president.
We returned to Kyiv and Maidan the next day. Thousands of people came to pay their respects to the dead. The barricades on Maidan will stay at least until the snap election set for May 25 to elect a permanent president. This beautiful city is in mourning.