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Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR's international team shares moments from their lives and work around the world.
The Maidan, Kyiv's Independence Square, has been the heart of political change in Ukraine for more than two decades. While visiting NPR's team covering Ukraine — correspondent Joanna Kakissis and producers Hanna Palamarenko and Polina Lytvynova — I went back to the square, where history-making news events have drawn me for over two decades.
Memories flooded back of two people-power revolutions against Kremlin influence.
In 2004, no one knew if police would fire on protesters. Instead, a cop climbed on stage, knelt, and kissed the flag. Hundreds of thousands erupted in cheers and tears. A decade later, riot police snipers opened fire on demonstrators carrying wooden shields and European Union flags: unarmed men, incredibly, running towards the bullets, leaving 40 dead in a single day, but turning the political tide. The president fled to Russia, and the fallen would be remembered with scores of other victims later as the "Heavenly Hundred." Those weeks saw students, pensioners, veterans, doctors and teachers stand in freezing temperatures around giant stages, teaching politicians that this was not a crowd to lead, but one to follow.
Those revolutions helped pave the way for the unlikely rise of comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy. First he broke character to call for peace, then became president, and later morphed into a wartime leader nicknamed "Churchill with an iPhone," recording defiant videos just steps from the square.
Driving away from the square, I spotted Zelenskyy filming at a Maidan memorial for soldiers and volunteers — including Americans — killed since Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion. I thought of stopping to ask for an interview, but the moment belonged to him — and to those he was honoring.
See more photos from around the world:
- Greetings from Guatemala, where one person's trash becomes another's colorful art
- Greetings from American University of Beirut, where more than 1,000 cats roam
- Greetings from a peaceful woodland near the River Thames west of London
- Greetings from Guhagar, India, where newly hatched turtles get some help into the sea
You can check out all the Far-Flung Postcards here.
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