Yevgen Nichuk is only passing through, on rotation for just a few days. Since the Russian invasion of February 2022, this theater actor has been fighting in a drone unit deployed in the Sumy region, in the east of the country, after having served in the suburbs of kyiv and in the south of Ukraine. This Thursday, February 15, sitting in an artists’ dressing room at the Ivan Franko National Theater in kyiv, he silently observes photos representing him in different roles.
Ten years earlier, during the winter of 2013-2014, he embodied the “Voice of Maidan” and harangued the crowd of demonstrators who had taken over the central square of kyiv, during the “revolution of dignity”. On the night of February 18 to 19, 2014, “Maidan was reaching its peak of intensity”, he remembers. Deadly clashes then broke out, followed by an attempt by the security forces of the pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, to disperse the protesters who had been installed in the square for three months already.
“We didn’t give up,” remembers Yevgen Nichuk, smiling briefly. “We fought for our values and for our dignity, and this victory confirmed a nation’s desire for independence in the face of Russia’s imperialist ambitions. »
“All these deaths in the streets”
Three days later, on the night of February 21 to 22, 2014, Yanukovych fled and took refuge in Russia, where he still resides. Ivan Sautkin, a director who helped create the collective of Ukrainian documentarians Babylon’13, whose ambition was to follow the demonstrations to counter the regime’s propaganda, remembers a bitter victory. “Of course, we bought a few bottles of alcohol and drank togetherhe said. But all these deaths in the streets were very painful and traumatic. »
The joy of the pro-European demonstrators on Maidan was indeed short-lived. Very quickly, “little green men”, Russian soldiers without insignia took possession of Crimea, a disguised operation which will lead to the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula by a mock referendum on March 16, 2014. Then, the war in Donbass, to the east of country, began, triggered by violent demonstrations by Ukrainians opposed to the new government in kyiv. Eight years later, in February 2022, Vladimir Putin will justify the invasion of all of Ukraine by claiming to want “eliminate threats from a neo-Nazi regime that has existed in Ukraine since the 2014 coup.”
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