maidan madness

anyone who is connected to world news heard about what happened in kyiv, ukraine during a week in mid february..the protest camp that had been set up since the end of november was growing, political demands were becoming more and more clear as days went by...i don't know why everything happened on these dates, but the short way of saying it is that maidan went mad...government forces started to make moves, opposition protestors fought back, fires were set, snipers shot at people, etc...specific details still aren't known, and likely never will be...by the end of everything, the (ex) president had fled the country, 70-100 people were dead, and the middle of the city was burned...tragedy...
one of the churches near maidan became a makeshift hospital, the bells rang a lot during the violence...the entire complex of the church became a staging point...you can see materials for molotov cocktails...there was a press center, there were canteens set up, fire areas to keep warm...
one of the biggest points to make in everything that happened was that the people of ukraine supported each other...they came with supplies...when they didn't have supplies, they donated money...when they didn't have those, they came themselves to do whateva they could...
the main post office on maidan was taken over as a makeshift hospital, so were several other buildings in the area...(i still don't know how to get mail out of the country, as that particular mailbox has not returned to its previous location...but mail is getting to me from europe and the states)since maidan is close to where i work, and the entire city metro was shut down during the three plus days this all happened, i did not work...i was safe in my flat on the outskirts of town, bored out of my mind...yet at the same time, i was super stressed...i barely moved all day, i was glued to my computer and phone...not speaking the language was tough...i watched live streaming of a lot of what was happening, despite the face that i couldn't understand a word being said by the commentators...

rumors were flying, the worst one being the threat of military control being asserted over the country...i was terrified phone and internet would be cut off, thankfully that never happened...the week after, i walked through maidan...it had become a large memorial...flowers EVERYWHERE...pictures of the fallen, EVERYWHERE...the burned out hulks of busses and other vehicles...bricks taken up from the streets still ready to go in case violence erupted again...even two weeks later, you can still smell smoke/fire, and the buildings are still black...who knows when any of them will be fixed or torn down...there is an unreal sense of sadness and disbelief that everything happened...
these photos were taken after the violence of 19-22 feb, in the first couple weeks afterward...