UKR-TAZ

From Yuri Andrukhovych, writing today in the New York Times:

“We are defending ourselves, our country, our future, Europe’s future — some with Molotov cocktails, some with knitting needles, some with paving stones, some with baseball bats, some with texts published on the Internet, some with photos documenting the atrocities. [. . .]

“The authorities can’t understand this. Recently, some unknown thugs in civilian clothes kidnapped an activist and spent the night torturing him, demanding: Who is funding the Maidan? Which Western sources? Is it the State Department, or someone else?

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Ilya Varlamov is a Russian blogger who has been amassing a wonderful archive of perceptively captioned photographs from the Ukrainian revolution.

See his primer on the revolution in Kyiv here. A more analytical piece, in Russian, appears here. The gist of it is a debunking of 3 myths:

1. that Kyiv is burning: it’s not, only a little corner of it – a stretch of Hrushevskoho Street – is smoking more than burning;
2. that it’s not a revolution or anything of the sort: it is;after 2 months on the streets and the constitution-violating passage of egregiously authoritarian laws, people are fed up & want a change of government at worst, a change of system at best;
3. that life in Kyiv has been paralyzed: it hasn’t; stores, cafes, etc. are open & everyday life goes on.

Keeping those things in mind, the pictures are stunning.

From Myroslava Gongadze, journalist and political activist, wife of the murdered journalist Georgiy Gongadze:

“Yanukovych is blowing up [zduvayet’sia] and proposing anything just to stay in power.

“They talked and each of them stuck to their positions. The opposition revealed that they won’t back away from anything position until the full satisfaction of their demands: repealment of the dictatorial [Jan. 16] laws; return to the Constitution of 2004; announcement of new elections; and release of all political prisoners. The barricades will be maintained and strengthened, all of the captured state administration buildings will be kept, and local organs of self-government will continue to be formed [as has happened in several state capitals already].

“I think the next couple of days will be decisive. The government will try to go on the offensive, but these are the last convulsions.

Physicist Nazar Bartosik has compiled this 12-slide presentation documenting what has been happening in Ukraine:

Andrey Kurkov, Russophone Ukrainian author of Death and the Penguin and 17 other books (translated into a total of 25 languages), author and political scholar Mykola Riabchuk, and human rights activist Myroslav Marynovych, writing on behalf of the Ukrainian branch of PEN International:

“[The Ukrainian government has] crossed the red line that separates semi-authoritarian regimes from genuine dictatorships.

“They persistently tighten the screws, encourage lawlessness and provoke more confrontation and violence. They remain deaf to all moderate voices and calls for peace. They seem to understand only the language of force […]

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From Yuri Andrukhovych, one of Ukraine’s most internationally celebrated writers, author of Recreations, The Moscoviad, Perverzion, Disorientation on Location, My Europe, and numerous other novels, books of poetry and essays:

During the less than four years of its rule, Mr. Yanukovych’s regime has brought the country and the society to the utter limit of tensions. Even worse, it has boxed itself into a no-exit situation where it must hold on to power forever—by any means necessary. Otherwise it would have to face criminal justice in its full severity. The scale of what has been stolen and usurped exceeds all imaginination of what human avarice is capable.

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