Today I scanned the QR code on the back of my hackers.town Ukraine flag “Be The Rust Upon Their Gears” shirt and discovered it decodes not to a URL but to a very rude Russian word.

Good. #slavaUkraiini

Soon.

#SlavaUkraiini #VPDFO #RussiaIsATerroristState

Today I made it to the Maidan Nezalezhnosti, Independence Square, the central square of #Kyiv. It was in November, 2013, barely 10 years ago, that the large protest which came to be known as #Euromaidan took place. The cause was then President Yanukovych’s decision to draw closer to Russia rather than to the #EuropeanUnion, a decision unpopular with most Ukrainians. Thousands of predominantly young people turned the Maidan into a kind of protest camp. I was following on then-Twitter, surprised that I could read some Ukrainian from having studied Russian for years. Even back then I was absolutely enthralled with the courage of these people.

So off I went today, on a pilgrimage to one of the sacred sites of the Ukrainian freedom movement, for blood was spilled on the Maidan, both during EuroMaidan and the following year’s Revolution of Dignity.

The central victory column commemorating independence in 1991, is topped by Berehynia, a female figure from Slavic mythology. #SlavaUkraiini