The day had begun peacefully. When we got home, we drank tea to relax. I thought the country, still on holiday, would have a lie-in until 19 January, Epiphany in the Orthodox calendar, and that everyone would pray, take ice baths in lakes and rivers, say their usual interminable goodbyes to the New Year holidays, and only then throw themselves back into the fight. Revolutionaries, counter-revolutionaries, servants and guardians of the Yanukovych regime, and all the spectators to these battles, frightened by an uncertain future. These spectators form the overwhelming majority. They include in their ranks my Kiev publisher Petya Khazin and his wife, and my old friend Sasha Milovzorov, who, whenever we talk about the Maidan, exclaims: ‘They’ve made the city a disgusting mess, those bastards!’
So anyway, the day had begun peacefully, but it ended in a mass battle with the Berkut near the Svyatoshino district court in Kiev, where some typical Ukrainian ‘terrorists’ were convicted. These people are currently known as Vasylkivite terrorists, because they are from the small town of Vasylkiv, about twenty-five miles from Kiev. For the crime of having incited a terrorist act – dismantling a statue of Lenin in another small town, Boryspil – they were sentenced to six years in jail. At the moment when the judge pronounced this sentence, the court was already surrounded by Svoboda supporters, as the defendants were members of that party. A bus full of berkutovtsy was parked nearby, in case any mass disorder arose. And it certainly did arise. First, the Svoboda supporters blocked the building’s exits, preventing the judge from leaving. Then they began shaking the Berkut bus, before allowing its occupants to get out so that they could be made to walk through the corridor of shame. They filmed the berkutovtsy while this was happening, so that their colleagues and neighbours could identify them and put their names and addresses on the Internet.
How did Yuriy Lutsenko end up there? I haven’t figured that out, but he is the one the berkutovtsy beat up. He has no connection with Svoboda, but he is linked to the Maidan. He was also one of the leaders of the Orange Revolution and Yushchenko’s former Minister of Internal Affairs. According to the first version of the story I heard, he attempted to stop a possible conflict between Svoboda supporters and police special forces. The Ministry of Internal Affairs stated that he got into trouble because he was in a state of inebriation, a claim which he denied.
This evening, on TVI, the Batkivshchyna deputy Arsen Avakov attacked the Party of Regions deputy Oleg Kalashnikov, the latter famous for having punched a female journalist in the middle of Parliament two years ago because he didn’t like the question that the journalist had asked. Had the presenter not held Avakov back as he was about to throw himself at Kalashnikov, we would have been spectators to another punch-up live on television.