Ukraine’s Euromaidan is the political equivalent of Glastonbury.
Kyiv’s Independence Square is awash with tents, oil drum fires, soup tureens boiling borscht.
There’s a powerful smell of sausages. There’s never a moment’s silence from the stage, someone is always giving a speech.
That’s mixed up with musical interludes.
They might well end up calling this the Christmas Tree Revolution.
Until early last Saturday morning, it looked as though the pro-EU campaigning was about to fizzle out. That was when the paramilitary police – the dreaded Berkut – attacked people in Independence Square – horrifying millions across Ukraine and plunging the nation into crisis.
Lame excuses were made that the most important square in the country needed to be cleared so the Christmas tree preparations could be completed.
Different tack today – uploading photos with captions. Latest photos will be at bottom of page.
Vitali Klitchko speaking last night in Independence Square. Now being widely touted as the next President.
Crikey! Come to Ukraine on holiday and a national crisis emerges. Am in Dnipropetrovsk today but head to Kyiv tomorrow to watch events unfold, and report on them.
I’ve seen small protests in Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk in the last week, and been told, though can’t confirm, protests here in DP and Lugansk were attacked.
Students at a university class I taught at last Monday in Lugansk seemed unconcerned by events the previous weekend.
Slagheap City, it has to be said, hides its charms well.
Nearly a million people now live in Donetsk, which was set up by Welshman John Hughes after he came out here in 1869. In effect he sparked an industrial revolution in this part of eastern Ukraine.
The legacy of his efforts is staggering to behold when you travel out to the huge metallurgical plant in the south of the city.
Les Bleus were bleu-dy awful and this must rank as Ukraine’s greatest day in football – the moment the champion chokers beat a world power convincingly.
I conducted an English lesson at Lugansk’s Taras Shevchenko University last year. At the end a student asked: “We watch Little Britain, tell me, are there many Vicky Pollards in the United Kingdom?”
It was the second time I’d been asked the question in a week. Both the people who asked were shocked to hear that Vicky Pollards were not uncommon.
Swordfighting and football don’t mix – right? Well I’m not sure after witnessing the Folk Football festival in Kyiv which coincided with the staging of the quarter-finals.
Good on the Ukrainians for using the tournament to promote their own culture.
And I was certainly not prepared for a battle Royal between two acrobatic swordsmen, duelling spectacularly. In fact it was a lot more thrilling than the Italy v England game.
Sparks were flying off the metal blades as they hammered away at each other in a brilliantly choreographed duel. Errol Flynn eat your heart out. The sparks would have been enough for a council health and safety penpusher to step in and declare the event off back in the UK.
Organiser Georgian playwright Raguli Vlasidze, who looked like he was a rumbustious chunky central midfielder with a kick like a horse back in his youth when no doubt he played in Tiflis, organised it to raise money for good causes.
Money raised will promote education, culture and sport, develop Ukrainian cinema and theatre and ‘encourage national spirituality’.
Ceremonial maces were on sale, football games in a giant paddling pool were organised (‘Allowed: hand gestures and lots of smiling’, said the programme).
The big ball on display in the picture is adorned with the designs of the Pysanko – the traditional painted egg of Ukraine.
Interviewing him via an interpreter was difficult as the English version of what he was saying came out in less than perfect sentences. But there was no doubt of an obvious passion for football.
He said: “Football changes our lives so we want to change people, this festival is for this.”
In the programme, it says: “We believe that the time will soon come when football stadiums worldwide will be adorned with national ornamentation, subconsciously elevating the inherent sense of national spirituality.”
In Wales’s case, that could well be a pint glass I reckon.
Previous to its visit to Kyiv’s famous Andryivsky Street, where the famous writer Bulgakov lived, and which is the centrepiece of the city’s historic Podil area, the folk football bandwagon had been to Lviv and to Ivan0-Frankivsk.
So with its giant football pie, I couldn’t get why this particular item featured, it was a suitably surreal and typically Ukrainian weird concoctioN.
And apparently the Football Peace carpet will be blessed by the Pope himself when it reaches Rome.
The festival’s website is at www.bigball.eu
Miles from Nowhere 