Ukraine changed hour to hour, 2 Arkansans say

The sound of gunfire, Molotov cocktails and tear-gas canisters exploding became almost routine for two Arkansans in Ukraine’s capital city of Kiev during the past few months.

Brian Mefford has lived in Ukraine about 15 years, and Christopher Kelley has made frequent teaching trips there since 2005. On Feb. 20, the two found themselves within 150 yards of the protests in Independence Square, also known as Maidan, where protesters and government police forces clashed. The altercation left more than 80 people - mostly protesters - dead from gunshot wounds and raised the total number of deaths to about 110 since protests began in November.

“In America, if you vote or don’t vote, it doesn’t affect your life on a daily basis.Maybe in the long-run your taxes change, your health care changes … but not the day-to-day basis. Here, in the course of three months, you saw a difference hour to hour in how politics were affecting people’s lives,” Mefford said from his home in Kiev.

For Kelley, a University of Arkansas law professor, the violence that started Feb. 20 was wrenching. He has traveled frequently to Ukraine since his first visit there in 2005 as a Fulbright scholar. He teaches short classes throughout the year on negotiating and legal writing in English at universities and law firms in Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine and other countries.

“I had arrived at noon on Wednesday [Feb. 19], and I received an email that my classes had been canceled because of the violence the night before,” Kelley said. “They had shut down the [subways] to make it harder to come to the Maidan, and you might as well shut off the power. The city does not move or even operate without the [subways].”

Kelley said he stayed in his hotel room that night because things were tense in the streets, despite talks of a truce between police and protesters.

“I heard explosions from my hotel room, but I was somewhat used to it at that point,” he said.

“I decided that morning to walk to the high point above the Maidan to look down and see what was happening. I chose a street that would avoid the titushki, these hired thugs that go around beating people up. The street I picked was this wide street and it turned out to be the street that the ambulances were using when they were trying to get people in and out after they had been wounded. I didn’t know what had happened, and all I can see is the smoke from the tire fires.

“At that point my knees are shaking because so many ambulances are going by.”

A friend forwarded him a text message issued to American employees in the U.S. Embassy, telling them to get inside and stay there until things were deemed safe. Kelley walked quickly back to his hotel and started looking for the first flight home.

“It was just a constant scream of ambulances until midafternoon,” he said. “Everyone was telling me to get out of the country.”

Kelley has returned once since the violence - he was in Kiev during the election in which Crimea voted to secede - and he has plans to go back in a few weeks to teach another class.

“It’s been a while that everyone has been living under this … this fatigue of not knowing what’s going to happen tomorrow, and that is just wearing even if you have some distance. It wears on everyone,” he said. “If you had asked me in January when I was there if all of this would happen, that [President Viktor] Yanukovych would leave in the night, that Crimea would become part of Russia … I wouldn’t have believed it was possible.”

For Mefford, who has witnessed some of the most tumultuous times in Ukraine’s history, the events over the past couple of months have been less of a surprise.

“One thing I always tell people about Ukraine is you should never look at what happens from month to month or maybe even over a two-year period,” he said. “You have to look at the Ukraine over a five-year or 10-year period, then you get to see the real progress. Ukraine is not always linear in its progress and it’s unique like that because typically countries improve a little each year, it gets better a little more each year. Ukraine is up and down like a roller coaster.”

Mefford, who grew up in Arkansas and graduated from Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia, first moved to Ukraine to work for the International Republican Institute in 1999, a U.S.-funded group that works to promote democracy. At that time, the president of Ukraine was running for re-election against a Communist Party leader. Mefford’s job was to help organize grass-roots political and civil organizations that could influence the election and prevent the Communist candidate from winning.

His work was successful, and instead of returning to the U.S. after his six-month stint, he stayed and worked for the institute for more than 10 years. After that, he worked as a consultant for Viktor Yushchenko, who became president after the Orange Revolution in 2005. Orange was the color Yushchenko’s supporters embraced, donning orange ribbons and splashing the color across campaign signs, banners and flags during his election race.

“The Orange Revolution gave people confidence in themselves that they could make a positive change, which is something Ukrainians lacked before that point,” Mefford said. “That was a phenomenal experience as well because you saw the power of people to demonstrate peacefully and how that can overcome well-armed police, how that can overturn fraudulent elections.”

Mefford’s apartment is 150 yards from the Maidan, and while he noticed changes leading up to Feb. 20 - a run on U.S. dollars and ATMs, empty shelves at grocery stores because people were stocking up on necessities - the events of that night were still unsettling.He heard the Molotov cocktails and saw people who had been badly burned after tire barricades were ignited to separate police from protesters.

“I would hear the gunshots at night, the tear-gas canisters, the Molotov cocktails exploding, you kind of learn to just sleep through it,” Mefford said. “But those days, I saw people bloodied from being beaten by the police, badly burned by the fires …. I’ve seen a lot of things over the last few months. These are things you don’t see in Arkansas.”

He said the events of 2004 and the events this year were similar in that protesters angered by political happenings took to the streets. But, he said, the events in the past few months were much more violent.

“In 2004, it was like a Frank Capra It’s a Wonderful Life ending. You don’t see that very often, the townspeople rallying around, and the bad guys lost. It was a highly traumatic 17 days, though,” he said.

“Now with what’s happened over the last month, the good guys still won, but it’s the Rrated version of that movie. Close to 100 people died in the violence.”

Mefford said he has been in contact with Ukraine’s new leadership and has advised several Cabinet-level officials on various aspects of setting up the new government.

“It’s likely that I’ll work with them in the future, but there’s obviously more pressing things going on right now for them,” he said.

Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union under Communist rule and gained independence in 1991. Since then, the country of about 44.6 million people has had several tumultuous political periods as it worked to set up a democratic state.

Ukrainian citizens began protesting shortly after their president, Yanukovych, announced Nov. 13 that the country would abandon efforts to strengthen ties with the European Union and instead seek closer ties to Moscow and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Protests escalated between December and February.

Last month, Yanukovych fled the country, and revelations of widespread corruption and theft in his administration have surfaced. This month, Ukraine’s fledgling government has had to deal with the secession of its Crimea region to join Russia and the threat of conflict with Russian soldiers sent to the Crimean border.