The word “maidan” means town square in Turkish and Persian and was adopted into Ukrainian. It’s how residents of Kiev refer to their Independence Square, where over one hundred Ukrainians were murdered or went missing, presumably kidnapped, during the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution. When I visited this week, the mood in Maidan was somber, with people milling about, taking photos, and paying their respects to the victims who died so that their country would have a brighter future. A statue of an angel holding a rose branch high over her head rests atop a column, overlooking the city. She represents independence and was built in 2001 to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union and Ukraine finally breaking free. The presence of this statue serves as a painful reminder of the high price of freedom and the promise to never again kneel to a hostile power.
The woman who served as a model for the statue was the sculptor’s daughter, an American, but the connection between Ukraine and America doesn’t stop there. We must look at the situation in Ukraine as a lesson, and maybe borrow a few tips from the brave citizens who gathered and demanded that their corrupt president step down. Our sleazy politicians and finger puppets of Vladimir Putin are no better than Ukraine’s disgraced president, Viktor Yanukovych. People like that care only about themselves and are willing to sell out their country for their own ego and financial gain. Scumbags like Paul Manafort have blood on their hands from helping to orchestrate the massacre of innocent Ukrainians in 2014. Perhaps when the walls are closing in around our fake president, he will flee like a desperate rat, seeking asylum with his moral equivalent, Yanukovych, in Moscow.
With American support for Russia on the rise, a search for our soul is imperative. We can’t just look at Ukraine’s tragedy and ongoing fight as something that only pertains to them. This is our fight too. The 2014 Ukrainian Revolution and Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea could be precursors to a much more dangerous and far-reaching aggression, all plotted and schemed by the grand puppet master and dominatrix to our gimp of a president, Vladimir Putin. In Pulp Fiction, this is the scene when Bruce Willis is about to flee his captors’ den but stops and experiences a moral dilemma. Should he save himself or go deliver some samurai-style vengeance? I vote for the latter.
With American support for Russia on the rise, a search for our soul is imperative. We can’t just look at Ukraine’s tragedy and ongoing fight as something that only pertains to them. This is our fight too. The 2014 Ukrainian Revolution and Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea could be precursors to a much more dangerous and far-reaching aggression, all plotted and schemed by the grand puppet master and dominatrix to our gimp of a president, Vladimir Putin. In Pulp Fiction, this is the scene when Bruce Willis is about to flee his captors’ den but stops and experiences a moral dilemma. Should he save himself or go deliver some samurai-style vengeance? I vote for the latter. 
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