A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them… In the finish of February the protests in Kyiv ended as ex-president Yanukovich ran absent to Russia and Ukrainians had a chance to hold early presidential elections. A lot of men who during the months of protests stood on Maidan (Independence Square) volunteered into the Army and went to the East of Ukraine to protect our country from Russian invasion. Most people returned to their lives,their work. We need to be all contributing with as much passion and commitment to strengthening our country robbed by corruption of preceding government and weakened by ongoing war with Russia. As 99% of participants of Maidan left, some stayed and possibly some new ones came in their place claiming that they had been there from the beginning. Over these months a handful of people continued to occupy Independence Square, or refusing to remove their tents and not allowing to clear unneeded barricades. Kyiv citizens who during the protests were on Maidan and also very supportive of protesters who came from other regions,now were growing increasingly frustrated with this illegal occupation of the downtown of Kyiv. Most of us went out of our way to glean around that part of city so that we wouldn’t see what is happening there. It was offensive to the memory of important events that took place on Maidan in the winter and especially to the memory of the people who laid their lives fighting for freedom. What made it even worse was increasingly frequent occasions of people from Maidan raiding businesses in the downtown. This tent camp on Independence Square was now hosting very different kind of people compared to the winter. The city officials beget tried number of times to negotiate the removal of the tent camp, but what they heard was that Maidan as it was would continue staying there to “control the new government”. It was not clear to most people in Kyiv why the control had to be executed by camping out in the downtown doing nothing but drinking and raiding local businesses. Yesterday city government called Kyiv citizens to reach to Independence Square to help clean it. nowadays genuine Maidan returned! People who cared for their city and for their country, or people of different ages,some dressed for dirty cleaning work and some dressed like they were coming to a celebration all joining efforts and working with great enthusiasm to remove barricades, tents and trash from Independence Square. It felt like we were reclaiming our city from being held hostage for months! The work was frequently interrupted by verbal fights with the inhabitants of tents refusing to move out, or some bigger provocations like setting on fire piles of tires or occasionally throwing fire bombs (cocktail Molotoff). But people kept on cleaning with the same determination I saw in Dec-Feb when they were building those barricades for protection. We hope that nowadays we will free Maidan totally and it will become a place where we remember the heroes and celebrate freedom.
Source: cnn.com