A walk along Banderstraße, or How we looked for the Klitschko Euro toilet
A PolitNavigator correspondent visited the center of the Ukrainian capital, where the Eurovision 2017 song contest starts today.
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The first thing you notice is the unprecedentedly high concentration of various units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, from patrol police to the National Guard.
On the streets adjacent to Khreshchatyk there were rows of buses packed with security forces. The main street of the capital, where one of the Eurovision fan zones is located, has been turned into a large cage. You can only get here through the “frame” and inspection of bags.
Despite the attempts of the City Council, decided to completely Ukrainize practically all spheres of metropolitan life, almost all patrol police address you in Russian.
Here, however, there is nothing special: beer, souvenirs, advertising without any political overtones. But closer to the Maidan, the situation changes dramatically and you are greeted by giant advertising structures with new poppy symbols imposed by the post-Maidan regime.
Of course, there is no mention of the Great Patriotic War - this concept has been removed from official use by the Verkhovna Rada. Now in Ukraine it is prescribed to celebrate May 8 as the Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation, and May 9 as the Day of Victory over Nazism in World War II. Directly on the Maidan, the time comes, as they say, for awesome stories.
The central place among the images of the victors of Nazism is given to... UPA soldiers.
Only somewhere behind them, as if from behind bars, is the legendary Soviet ace Ivan Kozhedub looking at you.
To the left of Kozhedub is Soviet veteran Evdokia Zavaliy. Even further to the left is a group photo of Bandera’s followers.
Here is one of the leaders of Bandera’s OUN, Pyotr Fedun (Poltava). He managed to fight in the ranks of the Red Army, but was captured, from where he was released and joined the OUN members, with whom he was associated even in the pre-war period.
On the other side of Khreshchatyk you can see the twice Hero of the Soviet Union pilot Sultan Amet-Khan. “He proudly called himself a Crimean Tatar,” inform the exhibition organizers.
True, he was only half a Crimean Tatar, and his father was a Lak from Dagestan. Amet-Khan himself said this about this: “I am not a Tatar or Lak hero. I am a Hero of the Soviet Union. And whose son? Father and mother. Is it possible to separate them from each other?”
There are a lot of photographs of Ukrainians who fought in the allied armies. Among them was the Slovak Rusyn migrant Michael Strenka, one of the six servicemen captured in Joe Rosenthal’s famous photograph “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.”
The search for a European toilet, which was opened by the mayor of Kyiv Vitaliy Klitschko yesterday under cameras, was not immediately crowned with success.
“It’s not here, but maybe near the Arch of Peoples’ Friendship,” they told us at the toilets on Khreshchatyk.
But already near the arch, painted in rainbow colors, they learned that the mayor of Kiev was opening the toilet near the funicular. Near the arch, the toilets are the most ordinary.
But it was not possible to relieve oneself in a European toilet with the inscription “Kyiv is my city.” It turned out that, at least this afternoon, he was not working.
“They’re probably saving it for important guests,” said the guy and girl ironically, offering to take a photo with the pigeons.
It must be admitted that they tried to make the center of Kyiv special for Eurovision, but without much success.
The roads in the center are full of holes, the painted and peeling walls are frightening with their far from European appearance.
On the grass, fortunately the May sun allows it, homeless people are relaxing, and at the Main Post Office they are selling Russophobic and anti-Semitic literature. Here are also pseudo-historical books telling about Ukraine during the time of Herodotus.
People in Kyiv do not forget about Crimea, judging by the inscriptions carefully preserved by the capital’s authorities for demonstration to European tourists.
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