What's happening in Ukraine?

The crisis in Ukraine has finally made the news in recent weeks. Most of the headlines in the mainstream outlets have focused on the violence in Kyiv. It makes sense. After all, fireballs and burning tires make for sexy pictures. But I’d like to take a look at how things got where they are now and explain what these protests are about. I’m not an expert on this subject, but I’ve been going to Maidan and speaking with people there since the beginning. These are my own views of the situation. I’ve lived in this country for more than two years now, and many of my good friends are Ukrainians, so I look at these events from a specific viewpoint. However, I think it’s important for English speakers to learn about what’s going on and why it matters, so I’ll try to unpack some of the main issues.

This is not about Europe

Protesters hold a pro-EU rally on November 22

The Western media still likes to call people on the streets pro-Europe demonstrators. That simply isn’t true. Protests in Ukraine haven’t been about Europe for some time now. Sure, when people first gathered in Independence Square, also known as Maidan Nezalezhnosti (which means “Square of Independence”), in mid-November, most demonstrators were angry over President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to walk away from an association agreement with the EU that would have brought the country closer to Europe. But the focus on that trade and economic deal was relatively short lived. The media have largely forgotten that pro-EU protests had begun fizzling out by the end of the month.

On November 29, there were maybe a few hundred people still in Kyiv’s Independence Square. Late that night, officers belonging to Berkut, Ukraine’s elite police force, invaded the protest camp, savagely and senselessly beating unarmed protesters and journalists who were still camped out. The next morning, Ukraine awoke to images of students bruised and bloodied by police batons. Those beatings, filmed and uploaded to the Internet, spread like wildfire across social media. From that day on, the protests began to take on a different tone.

More than 100,000 people flood Kyiv on December 1

That Sunday, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, enraged that their government could allow such brutal violence against peaceful demonstrators, flooded central Kyiv. People hopped on buses in cities across the country—from Lviv to Kharkov—to head to the capital and demand reforms and apologies. Authorities explained that they sent in officers because they needed to clear Independence Square to erect the annual New Year tree. The government then fired the city’s police chief, a move seen as little more than a token gesture.

The government’s failure to address the demands of the masses on the streets, compounded by Yanukovych’s arrogance and dismissiveness, served only to embolden the movement. Protesters from all corners of the country set up permanent tents, built a stage smack in the center of the square, and dug in for a long haul. The partially built tree, the government’s excuse for the beatings, became a powerful symbol for the growing movement.

The New Year tree, now draped in protest banners, is a symbol of anger toward state violence and oppression

Changing dynamics

Hundreds of thousands rally on Maidan on December 8

The demands of protesters in the early weeks were manifold—many wanted Yanukovych to change his mind about the EU agreement, others wanted reforms to combat corruption in the government and especially the police force, some demanded the release of jailed former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and others simply wanted to see the president gone.

Skip ahead a few weeks. Reports spread of protesters missing under mysterious circumstances. Protesters and journalists also began identifying thugs paid by the government, known as Tituski, who were repeatedly spotted trying to provoke violence. By the end of December, calls for change grew louder and more urgent.

On January 16, the Ukrainian parliament shocked the nation by passing a slew of authoritarian laws aimed at punishing peaceful protesters. The laws were passed unexpectedly by a show of hands in parliament, taking opposition lawmakers and people on the streets by surprise. Among the new rules, the package bill outlawed demonstrators from wearing protective headgear and sheltered police from punishment for harsh riot-control tactics. It also banned unauthorized mass gatherings and required journalists and so-called “foreign agents” to register with the government. Violations would lead to tough prison sentences.

Violence breaks out

Protesters throw rocks at police on January 20

After the law was passed, a mass of enraged protesters and far-right groups marched from Maidan toward the main government buildings on Hrushevskoho Street. They were met by a line of riot police who pushed them back. That is when the violence finally kicked off. Protesters lit police buses ablaze and hurled rocks at police and Berkut, who responded with tear gas, flashbangs, and water cannons.

The clashes continued for several days. On January 22, Berkut officers shot and killed two protesters—the first direct casualties of the conflict. For many people, this was the final turning point. By this time, the EU flags that had once dotted Maidan had disappeared, and chants of “police are with the people” turned to chants of “murderers” and “shame.” Hundreds of protesters and police were injured in the worst hours of violence. Reports soon spread that Berkut were intentionally targeting journalists, shooting them with rubber bullets and beating them with batons.

Police arrested scores of demonstrators, while many others disappeared. Some, including Dmytro Bulatov, a high-profile leader of the related Automaidan movement, reappeared days later claiming they were abducted and tortured. One of those kidnapped, Yuri Verbitsky, was found bloody and frozen to death in the woods.

These terrifying human rights abuses, widely believed to have been carried out with support of the government, have only fueled anger on the streets. Many of those who were once ambivalent toward the protest are now involved in the movement, providing clothes and food to those on the front lines and pledging their support for demonstrators. Every act of state-sanctioned violence has widened the base of the movement, convincing more and more Ukrainians that the whole government needs to go.

A weak and disorganized opposition

Opposition leader Vitali Klitschko tries to herd protesters back to Maidan on December 1

A common mistake is to confuse the opposition with the protest movement. They are not the same thing. The three main opposition leaders—Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who now leads Tymoshenko’s Fatherland Party, Vitali Klitschko, a former boxer who leads the pro-West UDAR party, and Oleh Tyahnybok, leader of the right-wing nationalist Svoboda party—have all jumped on the protest stage on Maidan to blast the government and jockey for support from protesters. They have been regular fixtures of the protest since the beginning, but they have been unable to effectively lead the movement. Deep distrust of all three politicians pervades the protests.

Radical groups, including those operating under the blanket far-right organization known as Pravvy Sektor, have grown in strength and popularity, orchestrating some of the take-overs of government buildings and spreading information about police activity. Those groups and their sympathizers have worried some Western observers, although their role in the movement shouldn't be over exaggerated. 

Next steps

Riot police face off with protesters on Hrushevskoho Street on January 29

Cracks in the regime are showing. Yanukovych, who for more than two months refused to budge a single inch, is beginning to show his growing weakness. Last week, he offered to replace widely reviled Prime Minister Mykola Azarov with Arseniy Yatsenyuk and to appoint Vitali Klitschko deputy prime minister. The opposition refused, knowing well that accepting the deal would further isolate them from the protest movement.

Azarov submitted his resignation a few days later, and the parliament repealed many of the hated anti-protest laws. But those gestures aren’t enough. The barricades on Hrushevskoho are higher than ever, and no one on Maidan is going anywhere anytime soon. The government must undergo more radical change. Berkut and the entire Ministry of the Interior need to be reformed. Yanukovych needs to call early elections. The situation is tense. It's unclear what the government will do next—whether it will again use force against the protesters, or whether it will negotiate a peaceful end to the crisis. 

What’s happening on the streets of Kyiv, and now on the streets of cities across the country, is not the result of one action by the government. People are fed up. They are sick of corruption in government and law enforcement. They are sick of economic and political mismanagement at every level. They are shocked and outraged at the level of violence carried out by the state. What’s happening in Ukraine right now is decades of anger and frustration boiling over. It’s not about Europe. It's not about the West vs. the East. It’s about Ukraine.

All photos here were taken by me, Chris Collison.

Silk Road is dead but its Russian counterpart is thriving

The arrest of 29-year-old Ross Ulbricht in San Francisco may have spelled the end for Silk Road, but a similar Deep-Web drug exchange based in Russia is still alive and well.

The Russian Anonymous Marketplace, like Silk Road, provides a platform for dealers to sell illegal substances directly to customers over the web. It's smaller and scrappier than Silk Road—just a simple online forum where users post threads with information about their products. But there's hardly a lack of selection. Sellers offer everything from marijuana to amphetamines, sometimes attaching photos to prove quality and quantity.

MDMA for sale on the Russian Anonymous Marketplace

Most buyers make purchases using Bitcoins, the online currency that rode Silk Road's success to soaring exchange rates over the past two years. Like Silk Road, many RAMP dealers send their product anonymously through the mail to the purchaser. But some sellers offer the option of a dead drop, leaving a package in an abandoned building or some other secluded location and then sending the coordinates to the buyer. Dealers seem to be located almost exclusively in major Russian and Ukrainian metropolitan areas—Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Ekaterinburg, and Kiev. 

Like Silk Road, the site is tucked away on the anonymous Tor network, an online world out of view from major search engines and infuriatingly difficult for authorities to crack—at least until recently. 

Silk Road may have finally been shut down by the feds, but with the community having grown and attracted followers from around the world during its two-and-half years of operation, it seems unlikely that all of its former users will simply give up on the idea of an anonymous online marketplace for drugs. In January, RAMP was home to a little under 6,000 users. Now the website boasts more than 16,700. It's unclear how many of those people made the switch from Silk Road after it was shuttered a few days ago, but it stands to reason that the website could see a significant number of Russian-speaking Silk Road users added to the community in the coming weeks and months.

If the demise of file-sharing platforms like Napster and LimeWire and the subsequent rise of BitTorrent clients are any indication, online communities targeted by the law have a way of regrouping and reemerging somewhere else. It will be interesting to see if the Russian authorities will show the same zeal as the US government at snuffing out RAMP and other similar services on the Deep Web, or whether, like the nearly universal disregard for copyright law in Eastern Europe, anonymous markets will prove a low priority for law enforcement and continue to flourish.

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The Iron Closet: How Right-Wing Thugs and Football Hooligans Spoiled Kyiv’s Gay Pride Parade

This is an extended version of a report I filed for The Stranger in May.

What would have been Ukraine’s first-ever gay pride parade, an event to show that Ukraine was moving toward tolerance and ready to protect the rights of its sexual minorities, was cancelled at the last second on Sunday when a group of right-wing counter-protesters threatened to turn the celebration of diversity into a violent fiasco.

The timing of the event was deliberate. With the Euro 2012 games less than a month away, gay rights activists figured the government wouldn’t want to cause yet another diplomatic row with the EU on the eve of Ukraine’s big debut on the international sports stage by refusing permission to hold the parade.

On that point, they were right—mostly. 

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Spring in Kyiv is colder than I anticipated. While some days feel like we've properly passed the equinox, I still find myself reaching for a scarf and gloves every now and then before I leave my flat in the morning. It must be said that after a few months of the Ukrainian deep freeze, anything above zero degrees Celsius feels quite balmy. I've come to believe that if you can make it through the depths of the Ukrainian winter, you can make it through just about anything.

Kyiv has a funny geography. The Dnipro river cuts the city in two. I live on the left bank of the river, which if you look at a map is actually on the east (right) side. I'm told that it's so named because if you look in the direction of the river's current, the left bank will be, well, to the left.

I spend a lot of early mornings gazing out the window of the metro as it slowly creeps over the river and makes its way toward the city center. It's a great vantage point to take in the sprawling landscape of the Ukrainian capital—the fantastic view of the Mother Motherland statue, the smokey factories off to the south, the bored security guards pacing along the platforms by the floating hotels. But probably the best time for metro-gazing is in the winter. During the cold months, the entire river freezes over and dozens of fishermen cluster on the ice to try and catch some big whoppers.

On an especially frigid day in February, I decided to gather my nerves and walk across the frozen water to hang out with some of them. I've seen frozen lakes and ponds in Eastern Washington, but I have to say that standing under a bridge in the middle of a huge river was one of the most surreal experiences I've had in Ukraine.

I caught up with a little group of fishermen who were more than happy to show me the proper way to ice fish.

The catch of the day.

Ukrainians have a different technique than Americans. I don't know the details, but I think it involves more cigarettes.

Gently tugging the lure.

This tool is used to drill into the ice. Walking toward these guys, I saw dozens of holes in the ice where other groups had been fishing.

Buskers Of Kyiv: A Compendium Of Shaky Cell Phone Videos

I'm told that while busking in Kyiv is technically illegal (especially on public transportation), the law is rarely enforced, though it's customary for musicians to give subway conductors a cut of their earnings so they can get on the trains and play. This apparently goes for all street musicians, who often have to pay the police to gain access to certain busking "hotspots."

Buskers are quite common in Kyiv, and they definitely cover the talent spectrum (some are god-awful, while others are quite pleasant). They range in style from traditional Eastern European folk songs to modern pop, with just about everything in between. I tried to capture a few of them on my cell phone while going to and from work.

Note for the last clip: I tried to go to a performance at the Kyiv Philharmonic, but the woman at the door told me tickets were sold out (I realized later that a small bribe probably would have gotten me in). Anyway, I wandered around the back and noticed a small orchestra of some sort recording a performance. The door was open, so I sat for a while by the stairs and listened. Not bad for a free show!

This guy was my favorite. I spotted him near the Khreschatik Metro station in downtown Kyiv.

September

Ladys and gentlemen, the words of the late Alex Chilton:

September is the month of motion. Everything seems to get rolling during September. It's the month of change. October and November serve only to continue September's momentum before things slow down in December for the winter slump.

I've never much cared for the idea of beginning the new year on January 1. The dead of winter? It just doesn't make sense.

John Steinback once said that July 1 splits the year right in two (I'm too lazy to look up the quote). But I think I would go a step further. If it were up to me, I would place the new year on July 4. That seems to be when things really feel like they are about to start anew. August is the month for planning—getting everything in order. Then the action begins in September.

Feast Of Champions, Or: Relearning The Art Of Eating

After two weeks of buying varenyky and sometimes delicious, sometimes questionable produce from the markets and babushkas along the streets, we found a huge supermarket with all the comforts of, well, any good Ukrainian home, probably.

Frankly, I couldn't help myself. I found an entire isle devoted to sausage, and I loaded up. Then it was on to the bread counter, where I grabbed the most interesting loafs I could find—to great success! One was a sweet bread (pictured) that paired nicely with the cheese I bought (I don't know what kind of cheese it was—I just know that it was one of the best hunks I've ever eaten). The other loaf I bought I had hoped to use for sandwiches, but when I sliced into it I found it was full of grape jam. Oh well, it was perfect for breakfast this morning!

Eating here is has been nothing short of an adventure. From my first-ever food poisoning experience to snacking on the salty fish jerky that the salesguy at the metro kiosk swore by (I thought it was kind of nasty), it feels a little like I'm learning to feed myself all over again.

My friends and I finally broke down and grabbed some burgers at McDonald's. I'm not proud to say this, because I normally don't really care for their industrially processed cardboard salt sticks, but it was one of the most enjoyable meals I've had here yet. And the worst part is that it didn't taste any different from the slop they serve back home.

Serious violation: bringing a McFoxy bag into McDonald's

A Great Thing About Eastern Europe

is that just when you start to feel lonely and homesick and completely lost and irritated by everybody who gets irritated when you don't have exact change goddamnit, there's somebody across the alleyway practicing some sad song on the violin in an old Soviet flat.

It's beautiful!