Meltdown in kiev

After the carnage it all came down in less than 24 hours. Friday was the reckoning day. At sunset, as the crowd paraded the dead through the streets, hundreds of masked robocop-youngs surged from the blood-stained pavement of Maidan square and once more climbed the barricades, vowing to fight to the end. Priests mourned and waved their crosses, activists filled Molotov bottles, students brought helmets, stones and metal bars, doctors stood by at the makeshift hospital in the basement of Ukraine hotel. The square looked like a medieval citadel in arms, with the wounded sheltered in ruined buildings and nearby churches, black smoke billowing from rubbish stakes, candles and flames flashing in the dark while iron clad warriors march to the battleground spirited by the somber chants of the ortodox popes. The 88 victims of the bloody Thursday couldn’t be lost in a shaky compromise: the EU-sponsored agreement signed by the opposition’s leaders was flatly rejected; the people showed a steel determination to get rid of Yanukovich’s corrupt regime.

Before midnight I reached the frontline, the last barricade past the Ukraine hotel at the upper end of the hill. There was a fire burning in a drum. Behind a charred military truck the warriors were lining up: they had shields and bullet proof plates, clubs and firearms. Then they burst out.

By Saturday morning it was done. Yanukovich had already left his plush estate in the city’s outskirts by helicopter, the army and the police had vanished, the ministries were vacant and soon the Ukrainian capital fell in the hands of the insurgents.

An angry mob surrounded the parliament where the robocops had raised the red and black flag of the right wing Pravyi Sektor movement. The representatives started to vote: the dismissal of the president, the appointment of the interim head of state, the reinstatement of the 2004 constitution, the timing of a new election, the release of the political prisoners.

At 9 pm Julia Tymoshenko appeared in a wheelchair on the cavernous stage in Maidan and gave an emotional speech. She urged the people to stay on in the square: the future is uncertain, the economy is wrecked, the country could split in two parts. The hard job is yet to come.