Ukraine inflamed

Inside St Michael’s Cathedral, one of Kiev’s most beautiful and best-loved churches, the cold air is thick not with incense but with disinfectant. Prayers are intoned not by black-robed priests but muttered quietly on the move by doctors and volunteers wearing blue masks and smocks.

They are treating some of the hundreds of people wounded in the worst street fighting Kiev has seen since the second World War. The injured lie slumped, grubby and bloodied against the ornate golden pillars of this singular field hospital, and a host of melancholy icons watch them from the walls.

"We do what we can for them, but it is not much really," says Alyona, a doctor from Kiev. Like most of the hundreds of thousands of people now involved in the protests in myriad ways, she refuses to give her surname for fear of reprisals if, in the end, their dream of a new Ukraine dies.

“We have seen people [suffering from] shock, with shrapnel wounds from stun grenades and with shotgun pellets in their bodies and faces. Others are suffering from the effects of tear gas. Others are just breaking down, having seizures.”

A young bearded man wearing camouflage is pushing his way through the church, roaming apparently at random from icon to icon. An assistant asks Alyona what to do with him. “He keeps coming here, but no one has the time to look after him or push him out. He seems disturbed. It’s not uncommon now.”

With the priests’ permission, protesters have taken over the buildings and grounds of a cathedral that for many is an icon of Kiev, its powder-blue walls and golden cupolas helping to make it a staple of postcards and tourist itineraries.

Medical supplies
Outside, scores of volunteers of all ages are collecting and organising piles of medical supplies, food and warm clothes donated by the people of Kiev, and preparing sacks of essential items to be transferred to other makeshift medical points close to Independence Square.

Ambulances and cars come tearing up to the church gates and wounded men haul themselves out or are carried inside. People lugging bags and boxes of supplies clamber into the vehicles – strangers working with strangers without a word of explanation or introduction needed – and they roar off again in the direction of the square.

Behind the cathedral, a few people move quietly among the trees, boots squelching in the wet ground. At their feet lie 13 men; each killed, a doctor says, by a single shot to the head, neck or chest. He has no doubt that it is the work of a sniper.

Their comrades come looking for them in their homemade armour – helmets from military surplus or designed for skiers or cyclists; elbow- and knee-pads for skateboarding or ice hockey. They are tired and dirty-faced, rushing from a frontline of burning barricades and tyres, still dialling mobile phones that are no longer answered.

Several find the comrades they are seeking. Worried about losing the little pieces of cardboard on which the details of the dead are written, medics tear open a trouser leg on each body. Then a friend gently writes the man’s name in felt-tip on his flesh.

The grounds of St Michael’s Cathedral are overlooked by Ukraine’s foreign ministry, a grand building fronted by a sweeping colonnade. Barely three months ago, diplomats welcomed foreign reporters to the ministry to explain how their country was about to take a historic step towards the West, by signing a long-discussed trade and political pact with the EU.

They talked about the unwavering desire of the Ukrainian people and President Viktor Yanukovich to move Ukraine closer to Europe in everything from its standard of living to the quality of its products. The deal was supposed to make Ukraine wealthier, safer, less corrupt and more able to stand up to Russia in their often bruising battles about energy and other issues.

"I am 100 per cent confident of signing. We have concentrated on this for many years, and a lot of reforms have already been implemented," deputy foreign minister Andriy Olefirov told The Irish Times on November 2nd. "I don't think about not signing and I don't have a Plan B. And I certainly don't have a Plan C or D," he said.

It is not clear what plan Ukraine’s leaders are now following, or how much of it they had devised when Yanukovich abruptly rejected the EU association agreement on November 21st.

Drastic consequences
Yanukovich said the deal would have crippled relations with Russia, Ukraine's biggest trading partner, and done huge damage to his country's economy. But no one has been sacked for failing to notice the apparently drastic consequences of the pact until only a few days before it was to be signed.

Yanukovich appears to have hoped that threats to scrap the agreement would prompt the EU to offer him substantial financial aid with no strings attached.

In fact, it offered economic support only in exchange for tough reforms that would have wrecked his hopes of re-election in 2015. And it refused to drop a demand that he release from jail his nemesis, former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

So Yanukovich turned to Russia, where President Vladimir Putin moved quickly to extend an €11 billion loan to Kiev and to slash the price it pays for gas: a move that successive Ukrainian governments had requested, in vain, for years.

Yanukovich returned to Kiev in something approaching triumph. He had shown the West that he had other friends with deep pockets and a less hectoring attitude than EU leaders.

The Kremlin claimed that the cash had been given without conditions to a “brotherly” nation in need.

Few in Ukraine believed this, and it soon became clear that the money Putin was sending to Kiev would be used in part to buy Russian gas, and that the price Ukraine paid for that fuel would be decided every three months, ensuring Kiev toed a line drawn by Moscow.

As the crisis unfolded, Russia also halted loan payments to its cash-strapped neighbour, with prime minister Dmitry Medvedev saying Moscow would co-operate only with a "legitimate and effective" Ukrainian government that did not allow others "to wipe their feet on it like a doormat".

The protesters warned that the lifeline Russia threw to Yanukovich would strangle their aspirations for the country, binding them to an increasingly autocratic state with a history of ambivalence towards Ukrainian statehood and ambitions to lead a new union of ex-Soviet republics.

Yanukovich’s handling of the protests – most starkly the use of snipers during a week that has seen at least 77 people die in the streets of Kiev – has only reinforced fears that he is dragging his people towards violent dictatorship.

What started as relatively small student protests against the “postponement” of the EU pact has become a battle for the country’s future, with those trying to oust the president saying they are fighting for their freedom and for the country’s independence from Russia and its puppets in Kiev.

People's councils
Unrest is now spreading across the country. Several regions of western Ukraine are now run by "people's councils" that reject Yanukovich's authority, and in some areas police have joined the protesters. The president's allies still appear to have a tight grip on eastern and southern Ukraine, but there have been no large, voluntary protests in support of his regime.

Yanukovich’s refusal to compromise and his use of force has radicalised a large portion of Ukraine’s 46 million people, aligning them with nationalist revolutionaries who are now widely seen as heroes for fighting – and dying – for a cause that has united much of the nation.

The government and its Moscow allies call the protesters “fascists” and “extremists”, playing on decades-old fears of Ukrainian nationalism among Russian-speakers in southern and eastern Ukraine.

There are far-right groups in the protest movement, and some of their members on Independence Square have fired hunting rifles and other guns at police this week.

But they are not fighting for a racially pure Ukraine. Like millions of their compatriots, they want a country that is less corrupt, more equal, more prosperous and more resistant to the influence of business “oligarchs” and Russia. And many protesters believe the EU can help them build such a state.

Petrol bombs
"This is about fairness, dignity and respect. People are sick of being robbed and cheated," says Anna, a woman in her 50s wrapped in a fur coat on Independence Square. "We are dealing with criminals in power. How can Yanukovich call himself the guarantor of the people's safety when he spills blood on the streets?"

Around her, an army of men and women, young and old, smash up paving stones to be thrown at police. Others are filling sacks with debris from the latest round of fighting, and hauling them along a long line to where volunteers are repairing barricades around their “island of freedom”. Teenagers march by carrying trays heavy with sandwiches and boxes loaded with petrol bombs.

At Kiev city hall, again occupied by activists after a brief hiatus, dozens queue to deliver food, clothes and whatever else they think might help the protesters’ cause.

A blonde woman, arriving arm-in-arm with her husband, pulls a black canister from her bag and hands it to the masked guard on the door. It looks like something she found under the kitchen sink.

“What’s this?” the young man asks, without reading the big red writing on the can. “Some kind of chemical,” the woman replies, shrugging her shoulders. “It burns well.”