“Do you prefer the 204 or the 1406? » On the foothills of the hill overlooking Independence Square (the famous “Maïdan Square”), at the top of granite stairs and planted and sown terraces, only a few windows of a Stalinist skyscraper shine in the night from kyiv. The Hotel Ukraine is far from complete in the spring of 2024, but in times of war every detail takes on importance. “ Second floor or fourteenth? », asks Iryna Mountianou behind the counter with a shy smile and a strict and dated uniform suit.
The lower rooms are closer to the shelter, but some guests still prefer the panoramic view from the higher floors. “People who come from Kharkiv, for example, settle without worry on the thirteenth and fourteenth, explains the head of the receptionists. The poor people, they see so much at the moment… What matters to them is a peaceful weekend with a beautiful view of the city. »
Until when ? The establishment, its three hundred and sixty-three rooms, its 22,000 square meters, its unique view of Maidan, the political agora where the future of the country is regularly at stake, is for sale. Inaugurated in 1961 by the leaders of the Soviet Union, this piece of national heritage remained a state asset after independence in 1991, and the decision to part with the capital’s most famous hotel was taken on April 23 by the Ukrainian government. Blame it on the war, which killed tourism. The hotel has fallen into debt of 45 million hryvnias (a little over 1 million euros) and the memories of this sentinel of local Sovietism, then post-communism, will be put up for auction.
An ideal war trophy
New York, Berlin, London, Beijing… None of the clock faces no longer give Moscow time in the lobby of the Hotel Ukraine. In 2022, staff saw the winds of disaster blowing away the last customer on February 26 – two days after the start of the “great invasion”. Everyone understood that this building, which looked like a neo-Gothic bank dominating Khrechchatyk, the Champs-Elysées in kyiv, represented an ideal trophy for the Russian columns. “The enemy wanted to take the capital and parade on Khreshchatyk, recalls hotel manager Bohdan Vasyliv. Rumor had it that groups of saboteurs in the city were preparing to occupy it, and we took turns to protect it. »
For many weeks, sandbags blocked the doors of the building. The Maidan sentinel seemed extinct forever. And then, in June 2022, the blue letters of the sign lit up again. The guards resumed their rotation in front of the glass doors on the ground floor. Sitting in a velvet armchair, a bit like a lookout at the bottom of a city, each of them started writing down the number plates of the cars parked in the hotel car park in a spiral notebook, without knowing whether these are old “sov” habits or the reflex of a night watchman in a besieged country.
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