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KYIV, Ukraine – On a recent autumn afternoon, Mustafa Nayyem sat in the corner booth of a dark café in the Ukrainian capital, sipping coffee and reminiscing about how the revolution began a year ago.

“It was a real uprising of the people, totally grassroots,” he said. “There were no politics, and no politicians to spoil the movement.”

See also: From the Icy Streets of Kyiv, Ukraine Spring Goes Global

In fact, Nayem felt pretty alone when he called on other Ukrainians to join him on Kyiv’s Independence Square to protest then-president Viktor Yanukovych scuttling an association agreement with the European Union in favor of another deal with Russia.

It would be the president’s undoing, though nobody knew it at the time.

“Come on guys, let’s be serious: If you really want to do something, don’t just ‘like’ this post,” Nayyem wrote in a Facebook post on Nov. 21. “Write that you are ready, and we can try to start something.”

Another post read: “RT!! Meet at 22:30 under the monument of Independence. Dress warmly; take umbrellas, tea, coffee, and friends.”

That night, some 1,500 people came into the square which is also known as Maidan. At first, the demonstrators were disorganized and the protest dispersed shortly after midnight. But the following day — and the day after that — a bigger crowd gathered. And not just on the square in Kyiv but in several other cities around the country.

The seed had been sown; the revolution was under way.

Within weeks, as many as 100,000 people in the streets. A diplomatic agreement on cooperation signaling whether Ukraine was turning east or west had become the lightning rod.

Ukrainians knew it was now or never:

Step into the future with a new partner — or give up and resign to repeating the days of the past?

After police attacked students gathered on the square the night of Nov. 30, beating them into a bloody pulp with truncheons, people became even more determined. Protesters formed self-defense groups and armed themselves with baseball bats and DIY weapons, plywood shields and orange construction helmets for protection.

They expanded their hold on the square and stormed government buildings, erecting barricades made up of park benches and cement planters, ice and cobblestones wrapped in razor wire. Men took turns taking shifts on the barricades. The Ukrainians were preparing for a war.

On Dec. 8, things came to a head with the symbolic toppling of a statue of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, a symbol of Ukraine’s past. As the monument crashed down, the group shouted, “Yanukovych, you’re next!” referring to the president, before smashing it to pieces with sledgehammers.

After violent clashes with police that cost the lives of more than 100 people, Yanukovych fled to Russia three months later, fearing perhaps that he was next.

Petro Poroshenko, a billionaire pro-Western businessman who had demonstrated on Maidan, was elected president and has promised greater cooperation with the West.

But the revolution hasn’t come to pass as expected, in part because of Russian involvement.

In March, the Crimean peninsula was annexed by Russian forces and the industrial heartland in the east is “temporarily occupied” by Russian-backed separatists. In that seven month conflict, 4,000 civilians have already been killed.

The country remains on the brink of economic collapse, its currency — the hryvnia — having dropped to historic lows. (In fact, the hryvnia was the worst performing currency in the world this year.)

While the conflict with Russia seems frozen for now, rhetoric from Kyiv and Moscow this past week suggests de-escalation isn’t exactly on the cards, either.

Russian President Vladimir Putin claims to be worried about ethnic cleansing and the rise of neo-Nazis in Ukraine. For his part, Poroshenko has said his country was “prepared for a scenario of total war” with Russia.

While the threat of all-out war casts often overshadows it, there is still a revolution to be fought.

“In terms of change of government, Euromaidan was a success, because it led to a radical change of leadership in Ukraine,” says Natalka Zubar, a Euromaidan leader in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city. “But in terms of other objectives — like anti-corruption and government transparency and other democratic transformations — of course we have a long way to go.”

“I hear lots of talk, but I don’t see the political will from this government to carry out the reforms we need,” she added.

Mustafa, who now leads a group of pro-Western Euromaidan revolutionaries turned lawmakers, knows better than anyone how far the movement have come. But he, too, acknowledges the long road ahead.

“These are just the first results,” he said.

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