Russian actor’s travel blog from Kyiv goes viral
Artistic director Mikhail Novitskiy wrote a Facebook post, comparing Kyiv with Moscow and St. Petersburg
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Artistic director Mikhail Novitskiy wrote a Facebook post, comparing Kyiv with Moscow and St. Petersburg
Russian actor Mikhail Novitskiy published a Facebook post on May 18 that subsequently went viral on the social network, documenting his trip to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. He detailed his travels whilst visiting his friend Borzykin, who was performing a concert. Ukraine Today provides you the shortened translation of the original post.
How I travelled to Kyiv:
1. Ukraine is very close.
2. Kyiv looks very similar to Europe. Motorists are polite to each other and with pedestrians. There are many preserved, natural paving, historical paving stones.
3. On the banks of the (River) Dnipro, you feel like you are in a brotherly, Slavic country. There is a lot of rubbish left after shashlik picnics, like around Moscow. You can feel the cognation.
4. There are almost no traffic jams in Kyiv. The city is freer than in Moscow or St. Petersburg. This situation can be a result of the rise in petrol prices or of the freer architectural development.
5. Kyiv is very green and spacious city, but the deadly architectural development becomes a real problem. Cars are parked on pavements and on the grass, like in St. Petersburg or Moscow. We are definitely related.
6. Customs. Just as disgusting as in Russia, Belarus or Kazakhstan. They seized a bunch of people who seemed suspicious to them. Crying children, women, old people were interrogated for up to two hours in a special office. It’s clear to me that they don’t do it to improve the country’s defense. They want to just try and win another star on their shoulder straps or something else.
7. My friend Borzykin was interrogated too. He introduced himself as an actor! It was a mistake. The soldier told him they already had seen one Russian actor, who shot Ukrainian soldiers with a machine gun and live ammunition. Mikhail Porechenkov has made a muck of Russian actors’ reputation. I got through customs in a few minutes. The bad Ukrainian language I know from childhood helped me a lot to get inside the country.
8. One more thing. Beautiful Ukrainian girls got younger.
9. The police behavior is quite polite. They don’t abuse people, search you or rob you. Especially Uzbeks and Tajiks. Maybe because there are almost no Uzbeks on Kyiv’s streets. Local citizens work here as the janitors and cleaners.
10. Russian language is more common on the streets than Ukrainian.
11. Maidan. At first glance, it is hard to find any signs of the historical battle here. There are no signs of smoke and the paving stones are in place. The only reminder about the events are the big banners with photos. There is an incredible number of candles – burning and extinguished. The square without people looks much smaller than the grand, burning hell we saw on the internet. The advertising banners near the portraits of the Heavenly Hundred look awful and disgusting.
12. The Heavenly Hundred.
It is something unreal. You can talk a lot about the heroes of WWII, but these guys are our contemporaries. They were walking the streets, laughing and breathing a year and a half ago and suddenly they are gone. There is a portrait of Boris Nemtsov on one of the trees. Ukrainians have enrolled him on the Heavenly Hundred list.
13. Protests near Verkhovna Rada (The Ukrainian parliament).
We got there by car. The police were very kind. They just stood aside silently. I felt a bit out of place. There were protests against the greed of local utility companies. I explained to people that not all Russians are fooled by the TV and that a lot of Russians try to think by themselves and define Ukrainians as their blood brothers. I sang the anti-war anthem by Peter Seeger in Ukrainian (I’d just translated it during the flight). People began to sing with me. Some asked me to sing ‘Putin hello’. I refused, telling them that I don’t want to wash my dirty laundry in public. People agreed with me. The next day, my Ukrainian friends even found a studio to record the anthem of free people.
14. The concert in the military hospital. https://youtu.be/VDwswXwch7w
15. The house of (former Ukrainian President Viktor) Yanukovych (Mezhihirya). It is the fantastic museum of the human gluttony and dishonesty. Everything there was built, not with the easy oil money but for the hard labour money. There is blood and tears of people in every piece of gold inside.
16. Planes in Kyiv beside each other are painted blue and yellow (colours of the Ukrainian flag) and white-red-blue (colours of the Russian flag). People are quite friendly.
I hate politics!
Photo Courtesy – Mikhail Novitskiy’s Facebook
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