Today is the Day of the Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred. Eleven years ago today Yanukovych's police, joining forces with his goons opened deadly fire at protesters fighting against the kleptocratic government of Viktor Yanukovych, who, in the years before, has given his friends from the mafia power over the law.
Back then, like everyone else, we thought that what we are doing was catching up with the rest of the western world — breaking away from an empire and building a stable democracy — something that the most of Europe, let alone the US, have done tens or hundreds of years ago. They have had their own revolutions where they overthrew their tyrants and it's long overdue that we do that as well.
As it now becomes clear, what we (well, my parents, I wasn't old enough at the time) did was not catch up to history. It was foreshadowing of the events to happen to the west.
Yanukovych's advisor Paul Manafort, having become jobless, has found a new job across the ocean, becoming Donald Trump's advisor. American tech business elite has taken liking in putin's doctrine of viewing own country as a hunting ground with ressources for their taking, citizens being one of the minerals countries are rich in, slightly cheaper than oil, which Yanukovych tried to adopt.
Meanwhile, European political extremists are spreading cult-like ideas that maybe, russian conquest of Europe isn't a bad thing actually. That maybe putin is a messiah that will free Europe from people with a different skin tone and accent, kill landlords and give money to the poor, establish the rule of ethnically-pure christian heterosexual communist revolution.
Anything to avoid the reality that it's time to protect the flawed democracy there is, even if you don't like the high fuel prices, corporations avoiding taxes, people who are allowed through the border, housing situation or the genitals of your neighbour. Because it can be said with certainty, that whatever plans russia has for Europe, Europeans aren't a part of them.
Revolution of dignity may have come late in history, but not late enough to not serve as a warning, or an example, if the warning wasn't taken seriously, for many nations.