Message to EU doubters: come to Kiev and get inspired
I saw a protester on the barricades this morning, furiously waving two flags at the wall of thick acrid smoke rising from a mountain of disused tires.
Fire is the protester’s best new friend. The smoke cloaks them for the police guns.
The first flag was the Ukrainian. The second was one you see almost as often on these streets in turmoil. It is blue. It contains a ring of golden stars and it belongs to the European Union.
You may be used to seeing the flag outside the ECB in Frankfurt, listlessly flapping in the rain. Or in Brussels outside a drab commission building. Elsewhere in Euroland, the flag is either ignored or despised, a symbol of a project in crisis.
But here on the barricades, the Euroflag is draped around the freezing shoulders of protesters, carried to the frontline like a medieval standard. It’s what this crisis is all about.
As I hear over and over again among the protesters: “We want to be part of Europe. We identify with its values and principles. We belong there and we hate the alternative, which is Vladimir Putin’s Russia.”
The last person to say this to me today was Vitaly Klitschko, the heavyweight boxing champion turned opposition leader who has become highly respected and who shows the clout and courage of a fighter.
He came to the burning barricades this morning to calm nerves and douse flames. “I take responsibility for the truce,” he said.
“The police have vowed to stop shooting if you stop throwing stones and Molotov cocktails.” He was challenged by the angry crowd but it worked.
The hail of stones was halted. The fires extinguished. The police stayed on the sidelines. It was an impressive display of leadership.
But while the EU’s leaders in Brussels have condemned the Ukrainian government for its high-handed response to the largely peaceful protest, they should also take some inspiration from events in Kiev.
Ukraine is not part of the EU and yet it is far more in touch with the values supposedly embodied by the union than many of the member governments who take too much for granted and have lost sight of the original proposition.
In the last few years the EU has been tearing itself apart in a festival of recriminations. Time to visit Kiev and get inspired.
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