Kiev ten years ago: Days of horror on the Maidan

Ten years ago there was a massacre of demonstrators on Kiev’s Maidan who were fighting for Ukraine’s rapprochement with the EU. Our correspondent at the time describes days that changed Ukraine forever.

In security training, journalists are advised to seek shelter on the walls of houses in dangerous situations in cities and not to walk on the streets. “As soon as the view becomes clear, when you have to cross streets, you run,” former elite soldiers advise in such courses.

They are tips that you hope you never have to use as a correspondent. But on February 20, 2014, it becomes necessary to stick to the advice because there is live shooting in the Ukrainian capital Kiev.

Since the end of November, tens of thousands have been protesting here against the government of President Viktor Yanukovych, who does not want to sign a negotiated association agreement with the EU, apparently under pressure from Russia. The demonstrators held out on the square, increasing in number despite brutal police operations – until the situation escalated completely at the end of February.

The dangers on the way

From the apartment in which the ARD radio had a small studio at the time, it was only a few hundred meters to the Maidan in the center of the city, but the direct route would be life-threatening because there were snipers on the edge of Institutska Street.

Instead, it goes in a wide arc to the Maidan. The path leads down a hill to Khreshchatik, which runs along the Maidan. Formerly a boulevard, now closed with barricades. You can see the smoke from far away and shots are still being fired.

The Maidan itself is unrecognizable. The union building burned out, the paving stones were torn out, everything is black. All that remains of the tents that the demonstrators pitched here for weeks are charred remains.

Lured into the trap

You can read the horror on people’s faces. They fought street battles with the police all night long. Stones thrown, Molotov cocktails. In the morning the police officers suddenly retreat past the Hotel Ukraina and up Institutska Street. Demonstrators run after them – and to their deaths. They will be shot.

Later, film footage shows uniformed snipers with special rifles. Police officers also die, possibly from shots fired by the demonstrators. On the Maidan in the morning there were shot-up helmets and shields, some self-made and some stolen by the police.

Dead people in the hotel lobby

We then continue across the square to the Hotel Ukraina, where a room is reserved for the correspondent, but it turns out: the entrance is initially blocked. A doctor comes out, followed by six men with a stretcher. A man is lying on it, seriously injured by a shot in the head, and there is blood all over the stretcher. Cameramen walk behind and point their lenses in the direction of the seriously injured person.

A strange scene emerges in the hotel lobby. The right side is covered with cloths, the left side has become an operating room. Volunteer doctors and nurses stand in front of normal tables on which injured people lie. Blood everywhere, the atmosphere eerily calm. Helpers do a makeshift job of wiping the table tops clean.

The ladies at the hotel reception are crying. You can hear women whimpering behind the stretched scarves. Only now does it become clear that the curtains reveal the dead lying there and being mourned. Death behind white sheets.

Better not to use the stairs

The Hotel Ukraina is a typical Soviet building, a high-rise building with 16 floors. It is slightly elevated above the Maidan. From here you have an ideal view of Independence Square, which is actually the name of the Maidan.

The room is on the fourth floor. On the way there, windows in the stairwell were riddled with bullet holes. A colleague recommends taking the elevator and not climbing stairs. Better safe than sorry. Shots are still being fired outside.

The room itself faces Institutska Street. The snipers were lying there. Maybe they’re still there. Close the curtains, turn off the lights – also learned in safety training. A quick look at the news agencies – they are talking about 80 dead. A dozen or so of them lie behind the curtains down in the lobby.

Weeks later, a sports scientist reported that he had closely watched the film footage from that day. The movements of the snipers when they aimed at the demonstrators showed that they must have been absolute professionals and not simple police officers.

Search for snipers

Doctors and helpers form a line in the hotel lobby. The curtains are pulled aside and the dead are carried out. Those standing sing the Ukrainian national anthem, tears in their eyes. This anthem had been heard once an hour, day and night, since the beginning of the Maidan protests.

Late in the evening there is a banging on the door. A young man, a Maidan activist, stands outside with a helmet and a metal shield. He comes in and pulls the curtains aside. He wanted to see if there were any snipers hiding here. Then he leaves again.

reporting under cover

It’s hard to think about sleeping at night, clothes and boots stay on your body – in case of an emergency, you have to get out of the building quickly. Journalists had repeatedly been warned that the hotel could possibly be set on fire; it was a strategically important building because one could overlook the Maidan from here.

Sleeping is difficult, the body is full of adrenaline. The meal is cookies, chocolate and water, bought in a small shop on the way to the hotel. The hotel restaurant stopped working days ago.

A barricade is burning outside. The firelight is visible through the closed curtain. The night is short. Maybe three hours of sleep, not deep, repeatedly interrupted by gunshots, three hours of live conversations begin on February 21st at 7 a.m ARD radio stations crouching behind the bed so that you are at least a little protected in case someone shoots at the window.

The conversations are always about the dead, the injured, the doctors. Then the decision: pack your things and get out of here, take the elevator, not the stairwell. The lobby is now tidy.

Shock and cheers

It’s a few meters back to the Maidan. Tens of thousands of people stand there, still shocked by what happened the day before. At least 100 people are dead. On the large stage are police officers from Lviv in western Ukraine who have joined the Maidan movement. They are cheered.

The eight-lane Khreschtschatik Boulevard has now also become a revolutionary square. Behind it you still have to pass one last barricade, meters high. The commemoration of the dead begins on the Maidan.

The author was a radio correspondent in the ARD studio in Moscow from 2013 to 2016. During this time he reported on events in Ukraine, among other things, and was deployed in Kiev, Donetsk, Kharkiv and Mariupol.