Hello all! I took a break on Saturday, and there was nothing going on in the way of press conferences today, so little newslike to report. Instead, two bits of interest just to hold y'all over until Monday. The pictures from all of this will be available then, too.
Yanukovych supporters at last
I saw some Yanukovych supporters today! I looked for them on Friday with Disco, (wrote about that in stories) but had no luck. Today we took Lesya's sister (who's living in Kharkiv) to the Pechersk Lavra. (wrote about this place, too, in my Travel Ukraine - Kyiv article)
The Lavra is composed of a Monastery and Crypt and is part of the Russian Patriarchy. The Patriarchy, in turn, sometimes seems to act like the religious wing of the Russian Imperial Project. They told my neighbor, a nice old grandma with about 1/3 of her teeth left, that the Anti-Christ is about to rise up in America, to be announced with earthquakes and plagues and whatnot. (She asked me, Isn't it true? I answered: Well, the 80% of Americans who are believers might be surprised by that." But later I thought, actually, maybe half of those believers would not be at all surprised. Anyway...)
Since the church has Russian sympathies, a number of Yanukovych marches have started or ended there, and Lesya remembers hearing that the Lavra was providing places to stay for his supporters.
Well, we looked all over the place, but didn't find any. We did, however, find a lot of Yushchenko supporters, including a whole chorus of orange-wearing senior citizens signing in a plaza. After a full day there we took the bus back, and, wouldn't you know it, we pulled away and one stop later we passed a little Yanukovych parade.
The group was composed of a small cluster of grandmas and grandpas, perhaps 20-25 in all, around what looked like a priest. They were all carrying icons of the kind priests bring out during Christmas. We had only a moment to look at them before our bus moved on. By the time it got the the next stop, we'd already gone a ten minute drive in the wrong direction and none of us was up for running.
Maybe I'll go try to hunt for them tomorrow.
The Chestnut Revolution goes on
Lesya and her sister and I also went back to Independence Square again today, just to contribute a little before her sister took the train home. I am happy to report that the Orange Revolution is still going strong. The numbers in the Square were thinner than last time, but it still looked like New Years. There were many thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of folks there.
Tent City looks more developed than last time, too. They have improvised a fence out of slats and crates and bits of this and that, and set it up around about two thirds of the camp. The rest of the camp seems absolutely covered in propaganda, the sheer variety and creativity of it impressed me. They had lampooning pictures, variations on Yanukovych campaign material, variations on every cultural idea imaginable, and big thick boots called "valenky", and oranges, lots of oranges. The boots and oranges are a reference to Mrs. Yanukovych's incoherent mess of a speech in Donetsk (I mentioned it a couple days ago) in which she accused America of supplying Ukraine with these heavy Russian boots and poisoning oranges because they're orange.
It doesn't make any sense, I know, but that's pretty much what she said, as far as anyone can figure out. Now Tent City has a pair of "pro-American" valenky about every 5 meters.
Tent City seems more organized than last time. Many of the smaller camping tents are now enclosed under bigger arching military tents. As I've mentioned before, they've put up an improvised fence. Some of our friends and relatives here in Kyiv are in Universities, and according to them, different student faculties are sleeping in tents in shifts. Lesya's cousin said when she stayed there the faculty teachers brought them food and hot tea and the dean gave them food money.
What these things indicate to me is that Tent City has settled down into a sustainable, non-frentic solidity. I get the feeling that they'll be able to hold out at this strength for a while. They'll easily make it until the 26th.
Today's big guests on Maidan were representatives from all the major religions in Kyiv, all speaking out against falsification. We didn't get to see everyone, but we think that included Muslims.
The Ukrainian Orthodox priest lead off, and delivered a beautiful speech. He ended with perhaps the most believed words among the person's gathered there, words that could at least unite all the Christian believers - the Lord's prayer. I tried to get it on my camera in video mode, but it cut out right before he started, and I fumbled all my memory cards, dropped them on the ground and stepped on them and started swearing in the middle of one of the most beautiful moments of the Revolution. Sigh.
When the priest ended the Lord's Prayer, he did not say Amen. He did this as yet another gesture of Christian brotherhood, because he was followed by the Catholic priest and then other Christian religious figures, and he did not want to end the prayer before they'd gotten a chance to speak.
It was heartening. Not only that, it was the name of the Lord spoken to a few hundred thousand protesters in the middle of Kyiv. Wonderful.