Thinking With the Blood. Owen Matthews
them, Russia has always been an alien invader.
Perhaps the starkest dividing line between the two parts of the country is over the legacy of the Second World War. At the war’s outbreak many western Ukrainians saw the Germans as liberators, and some were enthusiastic in handing over their Jewish neighbours to SS einsatzgruppe extermination squads.
“I see myself a boy in Belostok,” wrote the Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko in his 1961 poem Babiy Yar, commemorating a massacre of Jews at the beginning of the war,
“Blood spills, and runs upon the floors;
The chiefs of bar and pub rage unimpeded;
And reek of vodka and of onion, half and half.”
As the tide of the war turned in the wake of the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942, the Germans enlisted Ukrainian nationalists to their cause. They released the firebrand Stepan Bandera from the concentration camp at Saschenhausen and helped to equip his Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA, to fight the advancing Reds. The UPA certainly rounded up and murdered thousands of ethnic Poles, as well as Communist partisans. They also, though the evidence is contradictory, seem to have killed a small number of Jews. Whether this is because there were no Jews left to kill or whether they were not particularly anti-Semitic remains moot. Some partisan UPA units continued to fight the Soviet army into the early 1950s. Bandera himself was eventually murdered in 1959 with radioactive poison by the KGB in Paris. In any case, the UPA remains to this day the ultimate political bellwether in modern Ukraine. Is Bandera a great Ukrainian patriot or a collaborating Nazi swine? Choose your side. There isn’t much middle ground.
Surprisingly, even with such jeopardies inwardly stalking them, the people of Ukraine somehow managed to rub along for 23 years of independence. Chaotic, corrupt and dysfunctional independence, for sure. But even a year ago, on the eve of the protests in December 2013 which were to rock Kiev and tear Ukraine apart no-one (apart perhaps from a science fiction novelist named Fyodor Berezin who became deputy defence minister of the rebel Donetsk Republic, of whom more later) could have predicted that things would fall apart so quickly. When the conflagration finally came in 2014, it burst out quite suddenly and unexpectedly, taking even (I believe), the Kremlin itself by surprise. The resulting war revolutionised both Ukraine and Russia profoundly.
This book, based on a journey from Kiev to Donetsk in late summer of 2014, is my description of some scenes from that revolution.
1
The things they left behind
We do not know exactly what they took with them… But we know what the Presidential couple left behind.
The President’s mistress fled the palace of Mezhgoriye on the afternoon of February 21st. She had ordered everything portable packed; cash salary arrears were hurriedly paid out to the two hundred estate staff. In central Kiev, barricades were going up in flames. Over a hundred protesters had been shot down by sniper fire. The Berkut riot police, the last unit loyal to President Viktor Yanukovych, had abandoned the city to rampaging protesters after three days of bloodshed. Lyubov Polezhay and her lover feared that it would be a matter of hours that the mob would storm their private Versailles 20km outside the city. They were right. It was time to leave.
We do not know exactly what they took with them, though security camera footage shows that Yanukovych’s staff spent three days removing valuables into a fleet of cars and minibuses. But we know what the Presidential couple left behind.
In Lyubov’s personal suite in the main palace:
A large pile of paperback romantic novels, including one entitled Why Do We Need Men? Many apparently chewed by a small lapdog.
A large Andy Warhol-style silk screen portrait of Polezhay in gold glitter on a black background.
An empty safe, later cut open with an angle grinder by marauders.
A small sea of dents from Polezhay’s stiletto heels in the soft oak parquet of her dressing room floor.
A pedigree cat, and a quantity of cat-shit on the carpets and upholstery after the animal was locked in the room.
In President Yanukovych’s bedroom suite:
A dozen hand-made shoe trees, without shoes, all with identical wooden patches corresponding to the President’s bunions.
In an anteroom off the entrance hall known as the present room:
A large ledger containing an inventory of gifts various guests have given the President, and on which occasion: birthdays, New Year, and so on. The register is divided into eight sections: Watches, Pictures, Jewellery, Alcohol, Icons, Statues, Electronics, Miscellaneous.
A large archive of certificates of authenticity for art works, watches and jewellery. Many of these were subsequently revealed to be fake.
In the Gothic-panelled private film theatre:
His-and-hers matching brown leather massage chairs.
A large collection of DVDs and Blu-Ray discs. Notably: Run, Fatboy, Run.
In the private spa:
A pair of rare rose cockatoos, two of only only 2000 left in the world.
A heated swimming pool with rock-built waterfall
In the private sports centre:
A boxing ring under glass cupola surrounded with bas reliefs of boxers in neoclassical style.
An indoor tennis court.
A bowling alley
A large collection of gold plated Monarch golf clubs, monogrammed with Yanukovych’s initials and the state symbol of Ukraine, in caddies.
An oil portrait of Yanukovych in racing driver’s uniform standing in front of a rally car.
Yanukovych-branded vodka
In the grounds:
A private zoo containing ostriches and exotic birds
A golf course
A large collection of vintage motorcycles, cars and boats
A dog breeding centre with a veterinary surgical theatre and canine exercise machines
An equestrian centre.
Floating in the lake:
A large cache of documents, recovered by protesters and volunteer divers in the days and weeks after Yanukovych’s flight, including: receipts for cash bribes, files on opposition journalists and records of the president’s private meetings, including with Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
2
What a revolution looks like
“There was no-one in authority, no government, no control.”
The first crowds began arriving at Mezhgorye on the morning of the morning of 22nd February. Many came straight from the barricades of the Maidan, still in their makeshift protesters’ outfits of miners’ hard hats, Soviet steel helmets on top of thick woollen watch caps, motley camouflage and work uniforms. They carried batons, steel riot shields, hunting rifles. They found the gates unlocked. The 650-strong garrison, drawn from the same Berkut paramilitary police who had tried and failed to clear the protesters from the Maidan by force, had fled along with their master in the night.
They found a vast palace complex which officially never existed. On paper, Yanukovych’s official presidential