A report about the psychological impacts of
Maidan: The Psychological Service of Maidan has now established itself at the
McDonald’s on the main square in Kyiv. The service has more than 300 volunteers
working each day. They receive between 50 to 100 people daily at the McDonald’s
as well at the Ukrainian House, Kyiv City Administration, First Aid locations
and the posts of self-defence guard. Additionally, they run a 24/7
helpline. Within three months,
according to Ukrainska Pravda, almost 16
thousand people have turned to the service for support.
The report discusses how many Maidan
activists experience difficulties in returning back to their cities and towns,
when returning back to their normal everyday lives. Psychological trauma
and traumatic stress have affected everyone in various forms.
But the question that
the volunteer counsellors are asking is what will come next – stagnation,
depression? Or maybe, will the entire country take a more active role in
considering the collective experience of overcoming hardship, and
solidarity? Will the society return to the victim mentality – or will it
consolidate new, heroic archetypes?
In other news, community-based
groups have begun a country-wide campaign calling on Ukrainians to boycott
Russian products, banks and companies. They have issued pamphlets outlining which
products and services are Russian-produced or Russian-owned. They have been
featured in news reports throughout the day.
In Crimea, local
volunteers are also playing a huge role in moving Ukrainian service personnel
and their families out of the region. A couple living in the peninsula, Alla
and Serhiy, were interviewed today by Voices of Ukraine reporters (independent
online news source):
“We receive phone calls not just from
servicemen, but their parents who are asking for help with the move. We are trying
to help everyone. Many people started sending us money. As soon as the money is
transferred, we distribute it among the servicemen. We help all of them, but
especially those who are left without a roof over their heads,” Alla explains.
“We collect the money wherever we can. Once the needed sum is accumulated, we
hire carriers. Sometimes, we move them with shuttle buses, and if there are
personal belongings, we use commercial trucks.”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian news reported that
members of the Party of Regions (formerly Yanukovych’s party) plan to take
advantage of the recent altercations in Kyiv with the Right Sector. Information
coming from persons inside the Party indicates that leading members of the
Party decided today to ‘informally’ support the Right Sector. The idea is to
give them more support which would a) divided opposition and b) discredit the
Maidan movement and the new government.
Representatives of the Batkivshchyna
(Fatherland), Svoboda and UDAR political parties are in favour of conducting an
investigation into who broke the law in the events preceding the evacuation of
the Hotel Dnipro (of the Right Sector members). Meanwhile, the Party of Regions
is demanding the dismissal of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, while others in
the party are demanded control over the criminal investigation.
Investigative
journalist, Tetyana Chornovol, discovered that among the Right Sector are
members of the security group of Yuri Ivanyushchenko. Ivanyushchenko is close
to the Yanukovych family and a key actor in the country’s corrupt political and
financial elite.
Further, according
to First Deputy Prime Minister, Vitaliy Yarema,
Yanukovych and his supporters have
recently removed very large sums of money from Ukrainian territory (it appears
they’re in the billions of dollars). These sums, according to intelligence
services, are being used to incite separatist sentiment in Ukraine.
Today
in Russia, a prominent
Russian journalist and political analyst Yevgeniy Kiseliov compared the methods
of the Russian television propagandists with the work of Josef Goebbels’s
agents. Kisielov is the former director of the television broadcasting company
NTV and former chief editor of Moskovskiye Novosti.
This
is in response to how the Russian state TV channels continue to present the Ukrainian
revolution as a criminal coup and the Maidan protesters as Nazis. They maintain
their line that the Ukrainian government is illegal. They speak of a suffering,
oppressed Russian-speaking population. The propaganda works based on published ‘guidelines for journalists’
where journalists are instructed to talk about the ‘rule of crime’ in Ukraine,
‘growing squabbles over power’ and the ‘criminality disguised as Maidan.’ Finally,
the journalists are encouraged to promote vacations in Crimea. (sourced from EuroMaidan PR).
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