Yesterday, students carried onto the stage at the Euromaidan a three-foot-high model of Yanukovych’s ear and demanded that he listen to the protesters. If he doesn’t, they promised to give him a new brain. In 2010, during the presidential campaign, all the posters of Yanukovych showed him in a thoughtful pose, with his political credo emblazoned beneath in large lettering: I will listen to each of you! In the space of three years, he has clearly not heard anyone or anything.
Ruslana, the journalist Mustafa Nayem and many other Maidan activists have been summoned by the Public Prosecutor for interrogation. Yanukovych says he has found the three ‘extremists’ responsible for the first cleansing of the Maidan. They are the former KGB officer Vladimir Sivkovich; the leader of Kiev’s local authority, Oleksandr Popov, who is so fond of New Year trees; and the leader of the presidential administration, Andriy Klyuyev. I seriously doubt they will be sentenced, though they have been ‘suspended from their functions’.
Tomorrow, the Maidan activists intend to put ‘trees of blood’ in front of Klyuyev’s office, decorated not with tinsel and baubles but with photographs of the protesters beaten up by the Berkut in November.
Not irrelevantly, the government announced a new rise in salaries, which are already much higher than normal, for judges. Clearly, they will be expected to hand down severe sentences – prepared in advance once again – for protesters and opposition representatives. Let us hope they make enough money doing this to buy a house abroad, where they can take refuge when Yanukovych’s time in power comes to an end.
Today at 2 p.m., there was a meeting of the jury for the Country’s Pride Awards. They gave us documents about the ‘national hero’ candidates. My favourite is a 95-year-old country doctor who continues to visit his patients in neighbouring villages – even in winter, even when it snows – on his bicycle! The jury will meet one more time, and then, on 27 March, the prize ceremony will take place in the Ivan Franko Theatre. Assuming, of course, that the situation in the country has not worsened by then.