Euromaidan: the way Europe saw it and what was there in reality

At the end of 2013, when Euromaidan began, I was in my apartment in Odessa reading the news in horror… But let’s start a bit earlier. In 2012 I was working as a journalist in ‘What’s On’ magazine in Kiev and I liked much about Ukraine. But at the same time I was witnessing the rise of Ukrainian ultranationalism, fascism, Nazism. At the end of 2012 as an independent journalist I was present at the meeting of Ukrainian neo-nazi ‘Svoboda’ party and even made photo of notorious Nazis Oleg Tyagnybok and Irina Farion. I felt aversion to everything they were talking about. And when I saw the very same freaks and bastards marching Kiev on January, 1st 2013 with Stepan Bandera banners, I eventually decided to leave. There sure were many other signs of Kiev society serious degradation, but that Bandera march became the last straw.

I love my native country, Great Britain, and in 2013 I was glad to stay at home after my ‘adventure’ in Ukraine. But there was something I couldn’t forget… Working as a journalist in ‘What’s On’ in 2012 I had visited Odessa to write an article about the city and had simply fallen in love with Odessa. I had found friends there, I had deeply felt this city. That’s why at the beginning of 2013 when I returned home to London, I kept in touch with my Odessa friends from there. I told them I didn’t want to return to Kiev because I was much irritated by the situation with Ukrainian ultranationalists and Neo-Nazis. And my friends from Odessa answered in Russian, that is in common language: ‘Staff of the kind is never going to happen in Odessa. Odessa is a Russian city’. That’s why I decided to go there. In July 2013 I moved from London to Odessa.

First months everything was just perfect. Sure – summer in Odessa is almost a sacred thing. And autumn in Odessa was also marvelous. I began to discover the surroundings of the city, including the town Nikolayev, it was all very interesting. During that time I visited Kiev once in August on journalistic mission, after everything that had happened there, my warm feeling towards Kiev evaporated, and I was just working there waiting for the opportunity to return to Odessa. In general, I lived my life in Odessa, worked and enjoyed it. And then, on November, 21st, as the people all around the world, I turned on the TV and saw that something had broken out in Kiev. That event soon received the Euromaidan title. And soon I saw on TV at that Euromaidan those freaks I had personally seen in Kiev at ‘Svoboda’ party meeting and Bandera march. That’s why I certainly spoke out against Euromaidan. And that way I found myself to be in opposition to the majority of almost all of my western colleagues.

It was remarkable because when I was writing articles against Ukrainian Nazis in 2012, I wasn’t alone – other western journalists did the same. But Euromaidan suddenly began, there were Ukrainian Nazis everywhere…and the same western journalists earlier having written against them, suddenly got blind. Before that I had been writing for several major western media about Ukraine, but as soon as my position of not supporting Maidan became known, I ceased to exist for them. So, in Odessa I was going on writing article after article in my blog about Euromaidan. During that time I was interviewed and appeared in Russian media for the first time, the thing I had never imagined before. But Russian media were the only who let me tell the truth about Euromaidan. And later, in January, when the events on Maidan kept escalating, I went there myself to see what was going on there in reality. The truth about Maidan in Kiev turned out to be even worse than I had imagined before: there were Nazis on Maidan, extremists, Banderovites, drug-addicts, alcoholics, tramps, morons, idiots…

During several January days of 2014 I was so much immersed in it, that I wasn’t even following any media – I was myself there, on Maidan, and saw all that horror and trash with my own eyes. At the end of January I returned to London for my birthday, still shocked with what I had seen. I turned London television on, BBC news. There was a report from Maidan I had just returned from. Only on BBC Maidan was such a cute spot, full of pleasant people, really fairy-tale world. The only villain, according to BBC, were ‘Berkut’ fighters, trying to prevent those Maidan-minded from doing everything they wanted and destroying everything they liked… That time I for the first time in my life realized that the western media were the parallel reality.