Flowers for the martyrs: Ukraine’s Independence Square transformed

The centre of Kiev has been turned into a shrine for the martyrs of the revolution, and Maidan looks and smells like a flower show on the barricades.

The protesters of Kiev have surpassed themselves in their swift organisation and house-proud domesticity even in their hour of triumph and jubilation.

Although this is a revolution against endemic corruption and abuse of power in which the names of the culprits are all too well known, no luxury shops windows have been smashed, no disgraced politicians have been lynched or even subjected to verbal abuse in public, and the people of Maidan are biding their time on how to capitalise on this moment of people power.

In the square itself the almost impossibly linked barricades of perfectly stacked bricks are now lined with yellow and red carnations, their stems seemingly cut to the same length.

The citizens of Kiev make their way in their thousands along a path of shrines commemorating each place where every one of the dead protesters had fallen.

The road from the square to parliament that leads past the Ukraine Hotel, this was the scene of the final battle that turned the revolution, has been renamed the “Avenue of the 100 Celestial Heroes”.

There are thousands of people here milling around from shrine to shrine, paying their respects, taking pictures, many of them weeping quietly, others just staring in silence.

People lay flowers at makeshift shrines erected where the activists where killed on instytutska by #euromaidan pic.twitter.com/t7A4mXPZiP

— federico escher (@fedescher) February 24, 2014

They are mothers with children, bankers with briefcases, accountants looking for more work, poets with too much new material to put into verse and tough guys with baseball bats and smeared faces.

Yes, there are some unpleasant, extreme, frightening elements in this revolution and yes, they probably feel their time has come and that society owes them something for their dedication and willingness to sacrifice.

But this remains first and foremost a civic uprising in defence of a range of values that many people here think is exemplified by the blue flag with its crest of yellow stars.

If President Yanukovych, now fugitive from justice, had signed his association agreement with the EU in November none of this would have taken place.

But his inability to do so, his cack-handed attempts at playing Russia and the EU off against each other, and his financial seduction by Vladimir Putin set in train a chain of events in which he made colossal mistakes at every turn.

As his position became more and more isolated he decided disastrously to use more and more force, but not enough to crush the square completely.

This was Tiananmen Square like and it led to the implosion of a regime that had been democratically elected but had become far too greedy in its abuse of power.

Follow @mattfrei on Twitter.