KIEV INTERVIEWS 6-KATARYNA

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KATARYNA, 26, was one of the first reporters at Maidan, following the events from the start. She now has a rather large social media following, which all began during Maidan, as she regularly posted updates in English to her Twitter account. 

KATARYNA- I’m originally from Western Ukraine and have lived in Hungary and Poland. But I came back to Ukraine in July 2017 to work in Ukrainian Parliament. I started to tweet about the revolution on the first day, 21st November, and by the 23rd I was actually out there reporting. In the first days I gathered a few thousand followers, and this kept increasing as time went on. By the end of Maidan I had 12 000. I knew the importance of social media as I had studied the Arab Spring and the impact Social Media had then. On the 24th November other people began to join in on the political demonstration. When I checked my Facebook feed I saw people writing slogans like ‘Ukraine is Europe’ but the problem was that they were writing in Russian or Ukrainian. I realised that I needed to write in a way that the whole world would understand, so I began tweeting in English.
 
DOM- Do you think the revolution wouldn’t have succeeded without Social Media?
 
K- Maidan is a modern type of Revolution. There were no clear political leaders. The opposing leaders to the government weren’t the leaders of the revolution. So instead the political conscience of the people grew and the violence came about because political leaders couldn’t control the crowd. No one saw them as positive revolution figures.
 
There’s an example to show how well social media was used. In the middle of the night on 11th December, riot police stormed the crowd a Maidan. There weren’t many people in the crowd at that point, only a few thousand, not enough to hold of the police. People started writing on social media, encouraging people to come down for support. By the morning 11 000 people were on Maidan, successfully defending the protestors from the police. Social media took the place of the media, to spread the message. Organising and informing people instantly. It also acted as a mobilisation service as well as organisation. People were offering free taxi rides/ lifts to Maidan by writing on Facebook and Twitter. Or they wrote informing people on necessary supplies, like warm clothes or medical.
 
D- What role did the violence play?
 
K- Politicians had been bad in mobilising people and didn’t give the right lesson. Maidan grew stronger the more violent it got. The most stupid think Yanukovych did was order the violence. All control was lost.
 
D- Are you glad of the violence?
 
K- No of course not. It was the worst thing I experienced. I had been at Maidan all the time. On the 21st January the first person was shot. He was a protestor shot in the heart by a sniper. Many of the protestors had weapons. I saw knives but I didn’t see any guns. By the end of February more and more people had weapons, but it was nothing compared to the riot police.
 
D- Did the revolution do more harm than good?
 
K- Maidan or not Maidan, it was inevitable. It was a reaction of the people against all the bad things in Ukraine. The stupidity of politicians and oligarchs led to it, and the failure of signing the EU agreement was the final drop.
 
D- Were social media figures, like yourself, the leaders of the revolution?
 
K- I’ve never thought of myself in that way. I was a channel of information to the outside world. During all the interviews and articles I was thinking, am I doing enough for the revolution? There was no specific person who was a leader. It was the people together. The mistake was not moving and supporting one political force to take the place. We didn’t have one party, which channelled the political views of Maidan. There were many different parties, and that is what made us weak.
 
D- In the bigger sense, do you think Maidan opened the decide between East and West? Did it lead to the war?
 
K- No, this is propaganda. It lead to a moment of weakness in Ukraine, which Russia exploited. Documents that were revealed after the annexation of Crimea, that showed Russia had a plan all along. The instability caused by the change of power was used by Russia. It was really obvious that it was Russian propaganda. They said that the revolution and activism led to war, but they were doing this to squash activism. In this part of Ukraine, memories of WW2 are still very strong and war is considered the worst possible thing.
 
Personally for me it was like the ‘Tale of Two Cities”. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. After the shootings I had a mental breakdown and the mental trauma of the shootings overshadowed the success of Maidan. I used to cry when talking about it, but I learnt to separate the final three days [when the shootings took place] from the rest of Maidan, and now I think it was beautiful; a sign of solidarity and brotherhood. It’s something both motivating and painful. We have no right to forget about it and no right to stop. Revolutions can also be a sign of political immaturity in a country and it’s hard to initiate change in politicians. Ukraine needs active politicians, we have no right to stop reforming Ukraine to get it closer to the values of Maidan.
 
When the war started, I went back to Poland, but I continued to report on Donbas. I was working in the European parliament as my own personal way of not giving up.
 
D- Were the people in Kiev anti the revolution, and why?
 
K- Yes of course. Obviously with any event there are people actively supporting and actively against. There were people outside Maidan who were paid to hold anti-Maidan demonstrations. But most people were in support. It relied on people who weren’t actively demonstrating to donate money, supply food etc.
 
During Maidan, I knew I was physically safe only in Maidan. Because when I went home there were these paid thugs beating and kidnapping supporters, to create the feeling of fear. We still have more than 200 people missing.