Cold Shoulder
We keep abandoning Ukraine’s freedom fighters
‘THEY said it would be easy — just go to Maidan [Square], hang out a little, and then go back,” a young protestor tells the camera in the first few minutes of “Winter on Fire,” a new documentary on Ukraine’s revolution last year. “Not me. I have always wanted to be on the front lines.”
Tragically, the young man gets his wish, later phoning his mom amid the sounds of explosions and gunfire. The Maidan revolution began as thousands of Ukrainians peacefully took to the streets to protest their increasingly dictatorial president, Viktor Yanukovych, ending only after riot police slaughtered more than 100 demonstrators.
In “Winter on Fire,” released today on Netflix, director Evgeny Afineevsky poignantly tells the story of Ukrainian protesters’ againstallodds triumph, using footage from their 93day showdown in Maidan Square.
The protests began with indie flair; students expressed their profound discontent through art and even humor. That bohemian spirit carried through the uprising, as Afineevsky shows: Later, as the riot police advance with crushing force, the vulnerable protesters rally their courage by singing.
But “Winter on Fire” also unsparingly depicts Yanukovych’s escalating violence, and the footage is tough to watch.
In more than one shot, a swarm of riot police descend on lone protesters, beating them with metal batons and kicking them. The film catalogues gruesome injuries, showing one man with a shattered eye socket. When protesters carry another fallen man away on a stretcher, the camera zooms in on the carnage left behind, showing a mess that looks disturbingly like shattered brain. The documentary also catches riot police parading one young protester, stripped naked except for socks, through the snow into their van.
Such jarring footage emphasizes the courage of the protesters, who stood their ground even when governmentbacked snipers began gunning into the crowd. But as “Winter on Fire” shows, these demonstrators had good reason to fight.
“We are not afraid to die for freedom,” one man declares. “Freedom is for us. Freedom is ours. We will win, and Ukraine will be part of Europe, and Ukraine will be part of the free world. And we will never be slaves. We will be free.”
Another young woman later proclaims: “For 23 years, we had our independence only on paper, but now, so many people sacrificed their lives that it has become real.”
The film ends on a triumphant note, with the announcement that Yanukovych fled Ukraine in the dead of night, and new elections were just around the corner.
The directors can’t be blamed for embracing such optimism. Ukraine’s young people chose their values well and fought for them bravely. Thanks to such courage, Ukrainians won their best chance in more than a century to establish a Westernstyle democracy, founded on rule of law and respect for human rights.
Indeed, when I visited Maidan in April 2014, the same cautious optimism hung in the air, along with the smell of smoke from burned tires and fire pits. As Kristina Berdynskykh — a journalist who’s also featured in the documentary — led me around the square, I saw mourners laying flowers and lighting candles at memorials for the “heavenly hundred” men shot dead. But I also saw art posters wryly lampooning Putin and celebrating the Maidaners’ recent triumph.
If only Ukraine’s story ended there. Maidan was a battle well-won — but alas, a battle confused with a war. That war still rages, a fact the film alludes to in only a brief precredit epilogue.
Russian President Vladimir Putin couldn’t tolerate the sort of Ukraine that the Maidaners envisioned for themselves. After Ukrainians’ spectacular showdown, Putin annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and sent covert troops to rampage across the country’s eastern territories. Since April 2014, the death toll from the conflict in eastern Ukraine has risen to nearly 8,000, the United Nations reported in September, noting that Russian fighters and Russian weapons bore much of the blame for the bloodshed.
“Winter on Fire” also fails to touch on America’s abandonment of Ukraine’s freedom fighters.
After the Cold War, Ukraine owned the world’s thirdlargest nuclear arsenal — which it surrendered in return for vows that Washington, alongside London and Moscow, would protect it.
Today, Russia has desecrated Ukraine’s borders, while the attention of the international press has been diverted elsewhere. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has staunchly opposed arming Ukrainians, despite their proven willingness to defend their country.
Netflix has proved to be a powerful media platform, using its hefty audience to draw attention to key socialjustice issues, including prison reform and transgender rights. Ukraine is a worthy subject in need of attention, and “Winter on Fire” makes Ukrainians’ passion for freedom contagious.