6 Insanely Post-Apocalyptic Realities of the Ukraine Revolt
Honestly, these anti-government protests and revolutions are all starting to run together.
We've seen it happen seemingly a dozen times in the Middle East, and now it appears that every month the streets of some unstable country are filling with young people running from tear gas and setting things on fire. Well, have you ever wondered what it's like to get so fed up with the system that you take to the streets, facing down tanks and machine guns armed with nothing but whatever random objects you can find around the house? We wondered that very thing, so we asked some people who did it. Successfully.
The activists we spoke to are from Ukraine (their protest, in a roundabout way, led to the Crimean crisis currently dominating every news cycle not dedicated to whatever Justin Bieber snorted this week), whose movement grew from a few people squatting in a public square to a force that toppled their government within just a few months. And they told us ...
Having an Ice Fortress Helps
Remember the "Occupy" movement? You know, when lots of young Americans insisted they were going to overthrow the system by permanently camping in various public parks? And then everyone went home as soon as it got cold? Well, when protesters in Ukraine got sick of their government, they built a gigantic fucking medieval-style fortress in Independence Square ("Maidan") in the capital city of Kiev, complete with ramparts:
See, guys? That's how you "Occupy" something.
The protesters we spoke to knew they didn't have the immediate, overwhelming numbers necessary to pull off an Egypt-style popular coup. And they also realized that big marches through the streets were easy to disperse -- suppressing one meant nothing more than a day or two of bad publicity for the president's regime. Building a giant fortress, on the other hand, let their numbers count for more and guaranteed that any government crackdown would be livestreamed across the world for days. And if you think we're being silly referring to their fortress as "medieval," well, here's their catapult:
One of them, anyway.
And where a brutal winter is usually the worst enemy to a movement based on camping in a public place, the fortress was a way to turn winter into an improvised weapon. The protesters realized early on that Kiev's regular snowfall had a purpose beyond pleasing Bing Crosby's ghost. If you compact a shitload of snow into a trash bag, you eventually wind up with an ice brick hard enough to stop bullets. Combine enough of those bags, and boom -- ice fortress:
That's Mr. Ice Fortress to you.
But the wall isn't what makes the fortress work; it's the logistics of managing the functioning army of volunteers inside it. As one of the protesters (who we'll call "Alexander") said:
"People have installed huge kitchens to feed everyone. The early protesters organized into several different camps. And each camp has their own thing. Some do kitchens, some specialize in being filled with a lot of strong armored guys to protect the perimeter. There's even a camp specializing in IT: They have Wi-Fi and a bunch of community tablets and laptops so people can stay in touch."
As the months wore on, protesters organized their own free university:
"Today we're going to learn the history of trebuchets, and then use one on a phalanx of riot police."
And a library:
They were in it for the long haul, is what we're saying.
Having Grizzled Combat Veterans on Your Side Helps, Too
The protesters would wind up holding that square in Kiev for months, and when the government tried to take them out, they didn't just show up with pepper spray and threats of disorderly conduct arrests. Things got serious, and bloody, courtesy of the Berkut -- Ukraine's elite riot police/overly enthusiastic stormtrooper cosplayers:
But on the side of the protesters were, among others, the people you'd think were least likely to take part in a hippie sit-in protest: middle-aged army vets with combat experience. So right away, the tone of this protest was a little different from the kind of chants-and-signs demonstrations that the authorities usually ignore. As another of the protesters, "Alexey," told us:
"Many of them were veterans of special forces, the Russian Spetsnaz. The first were veterans of the Soviet/Afghan war ... they train every evening. They make shields, and they also have trophy shields that they took from the police."
Pro Tip: Stolen riot shields make surprisingly cozy pillows.
The presence of Afghan war veterans is important -- if you haven't seen Rambo III, the invasion of Afghanistan was the USSR's Vietnam, lasting 10 years and costing 13,000 soldiers and over a million Afghan lives. In other words, these people weren't going to run in terror the moment they heard gunfire. The combination of "hardened veterans" and "normal people pissed off that the police are beating people bloody" meant Ukraine's new protest movement had a little more resolve than the average crowd of college students.
It Starts With Psychological Warfare
If you've been following the Ukraine story on the news, you already know that square and snow fortress would eventually become the apocalyptic hellstorm you've seen on television recently. But the violence was the culmination of a long campaign of back-and-forth mindfucks.
And an ongoing attempt to birth history's most badass picture.
First, a little bit of background: All of this started when Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych took a $15 billion bribe from Russia in exchange for pulling out of a treaty that would have brought his country closer to the European Union. The president wasn't exactly popular in the first place, doing things like rigging his election, as well as stealing $160 million from the central bank and using government funds to build a private palace complete with its own zoo. But this move to align with Russia over the EU was the last straw, and citizens who were terrified of winding up under Putin's reign started to protest.
The clashes with the government were nonviolent, for a while. Almost passive-aggressive, in fact. For example, one photographer we spoke to attended a human chain in front of one of the lines of riot police. Rather than packing their usual homemade shields and beat sticks, the protesters showed up with mirrors:
Shame! It's the emotional equivalent of a catapult loaded with rocks. Of course, the government had their own tactics, like forcing protesters to stand around naked in below-zero weather while riot police laughed and took photos.
Tensions built as the protesters made it clear they weren't going anywhere. And they knew that, eventually, the inevitable was going to happen ...
All at Once, the Protest Becomes a Revolution
As in any war, the supply lines are crucial. The barricades don't hold themselves -- thousands of protesters eat thousands of pounds of food, drink thousands of pounds of water, and poop thousands of pounds of poop. They need supplies, waste management ... in other words, they have to run their own functioning city. To keep their fortress supplied, the protesters formed the Automaidan: car-owning cavalry who ferried supplies where they were needed. To quote another activist we spoke to, "Olesya":
"The Automaidan patrol the streets, they know where the police are -- which streets you can expect to see them at and when their patrols are scheduled for. If a car does get stopped by those police, they have a radio system, and they can call for reinforcements. Cars full of protesters will swarm the traffic stop and start taking video and yelling whenever we catch them violating some procedure."
So they didn't have time to decorate. It's still more Road Warrior than anything you've done.
Olesya's husband was involved in this continuing tit-for-tat between the Automaidan and the Berkut. At one point, some prisoners were being driven to a jail, and swarms of car-mounted protesters surrounded the motorcade on the highway and forced the police to stop. The protesters jammed the road, blocked all exits, and mobbed the police van with a sea of angry humanity. They told the Berkut they could walk out, but only if they removed their helmets so the protesters could take pictures of their faces. It was a rare victory during a difficult time, and the Automaidan paid for it. A few days later, Olesya said, the worst happened:
"They pulled over one vehicle in the Automaidan and stole their radio, so they started sending out requests for all the other drivers to converge on this one area. And when my husband and his comrades arrived, it was an ambush. They were all arrested and beaten, and their cars were impounded."
The whole thing was caught on video:
But the supplies kept flowing. In this brand new "wartime" economy, the two most valuable commodities were firewood (because nights with below-zero temperatures aren't uncommon) and tires. Try smuggling huge piles of either past a police checkpoint in your car to see why. The cops recognized this, and for weeks the citizens of Kiev couldn't transport car tires or firewood without risking a beatdown. For a brief time, Kiev was the only city on Earth where "felony possession of tires" was a thing. And just why are car tires useful? Well, it just so happens that you can stack a bunch of them up into a fairly effective barricade:
But fuck it, you can stack anything. The real value of the car tire is its ability to burn like a son of a bitch for hours while pouring off clouds of inky black poison smoke at anyone downwind. So when the Ukrainian police slammed against the rebel fortress, the only way to hold the barricades was by turning them into a ring of fire. Alexey was there for the final, apocalyptic showdown:
We'll just leave this here to set the scene.
"The Berkut were very close now ... The whole place was disorganized, and a lot of the self-defense force guys were missing. Berkut snipers with rubber bullets were shooting for the heads and abdomens of the Afghan veterans to remove them from the scene. At some point we realized that this was all on us. We had to stop the attack from progressing ... The cannonade was nonstop. Something was exploding every second. Stun grenades and smoke grenades, mostly. The police had advanced right up to the barricade. So the protesters decided to light the barricades on fire to keep them out."
A thousand heavy metal album covers were born that night.
Fire Hoses Are Scarier Than Tanks
Really, a lifetime of Hollywood movies is piss-poor preparation for fighting a successful revolution. For example, you'd expect a big ol' tank like this ...
APC, whatever. Don't be a dick.
... to destroy a barricade made of wood and tires and ice with ease. But an armored personnel carrier is surprisingly easy to deal with. Combine professional-grade fireworks ...
... with the best Molotov cocktails your combined liquor cabinets can make ...
... and you can melt an armored personnel carrier's wheels to the ground in literally three seconds:
If you can't watch the video, let us sum it up in three photos:
Never again will we doubt the utility of a well-stocked liquor cabinet.
The most dangerous weapon in the government's arsenal didn't turn out to be tanks or guns or even tear gas. Fire hoses, mounted on vehicles, made an ideal foil to both the "wall of fire" surrounding the Maidan and the protesters themselves. You take a hose soaking in below-zero temperatures and try to do anything but freeze.
Winter is a fickle friend.
Alexey said:
"We stopped throwing the Molotovs until we really needed them, when the water cannons started advancing. I saw five cocktails hit a cannon at once and it just started to melt down, there was a great cheer as the water stopped flowing."
In the End, You'd Be Shocked at What a Bunch of Protesters Can Accomplish
When 2014 arrived, so did the endgame.
Protesters, seen here fighting what we suspect to be some sort of Balrog.
On January 16, the government passed a law banning things like "wearing a helmet" and "protesting your violent government" with prison time. And because Yanukovych was a hip, with-it sort of despot, he had no qualms about using technology to terrify dissenters. Every activist whose phone had GPS received this text message shortly after the protests started: "You are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance."
"Thank you for choosing FascisMobile."
Meanwhile, the list of detained and missing grew every day. While the protests were at their peak, we asked one activist what it was like to be hunted by his own government:
"In the last few days several people I know have gone missing. One of the Maidan's organizers went missing a few days ago. Sometimes people leave their home, their families know they're headed for the Maidan, and their families don't hear of them again. Or they go to the gas station to fuel up and this is when they go missing."
It got to the point where "huddled around a fire barrel with other protesters" was the safest place to be.
When we asked what he planned to do if the police came for him, he put a finger out in the apparently international-or-at-least-European-also gesture of "wait." This was a middle-aged fellow who looked more like the Platonic ideal of an algebra teacher than a revolutionary firebrand. He stood up and in one smooth motion lifted a bulletproof vest from beside his desk and slid it on. Then he flashed an enormous Russian-made revolver to the camera and said, "The authorities have left us no other way out."
Thus, Molotovs.
On Monday, February 17, Vladimir Putin gave the Ukrainian government $2 billion and some advice. The government took both, and that next day they invaded the Maidan with tanks and machine guns. Three days of violence followed, resulting in the deaths of 100 protesters and 16 police officers. But that wound up being the last gasp of the old regime: By the end of the week, Yanukovych was fleeing for his life. Several days later, he attempted and failed to break a pen while delivering an ultimatum on international television:
C'mon, guy. Pencils.
This prompted Russia to move into Crimea (a region of Ukraine with a Russian majority population) and turned the whole thing into the international crisis that continues as of the writing of this article.
But whatever happens, it's important to keep the above picture in mind. Think of it when you hear the latest outrage from people like Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un: At the heart of every dictator is a frustrated little man who can't even master his Bic.
You can donate to help those who were wounded and killed in the protests here.
Robert Evans would like to thank Yuliya Skatova for translating several hours worth of interviews, Alexey Karpovich for being an incredible photographer, and Alexander Marinich for helping him organize this. Please contact Robert here if you have a story to tell.
Robert Evans wrote a book, A Brief History of Vice, in which he drank his own pee to test an ancient tobacco recipe. The least you can do is pre-order it.
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5 Ways Growing Up Female In Saudi Arabia Is A Nightmare
When Saudi Arabia makes the news, it's usually because their government has done something horrible to somebody undeserving for a very, very stupid reason. But you can't judge an entire country by their government (America desperately hopes). That's why we reached out to Aaida, a Saudi woman, and Adam, who spent his childhood in Saudi Arabia's capital of Riyadh, to find out what life there is really like. This is what they told us.
Editorial Note: Since this article was published the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia reversed its policy on female drivers, and now the ladies of the country can work for Uber. That's awesome. But all of the other terrible and crazy restrictions listed in this article are still reality for millions of Saudi women. There's a long way yet to go.
Basically Everything We Love Is Banned
Saudi Arabia is governed by Sharia law, which is a set of Islamic rules that pretty much boil down to banning anything that stimulates in any way. Adam elaborates:
"Everybody knows about beer, pork, and porn, but it also extends to congregating in large groups (more than five, I think) and the playing of music in public. Also, I think Jeddah has recently forbidden the walking of dogs in public, because they may be used to attract the ladies."
Evil takes many forms.
Imagine an entire country run by a crusty, mean old dean from an '80s college comedy, and you'll come up with something very close to Saudi Arabia. Throw in a few rules a sheltered suburban mom named Carol would come up with, and the illusion will be complete.
"Since my dad was a biology teacher," Adam says, "it was quite difficult to use the web to research things, because of the propensity to display naked bodies. This is the page you used to get back in the day ..."
"We're not mad at you. Just disappointed."
Censorship also infiltrates the physical realm: "On occasion, I used to buy PC Gamer magazine, and all the computer-generated women had their arms, legs, and exposed cleavage colored in with black permanent marker. (Very precisely outlined, though. The censors were very fastidious in executing their jobs.) And since Islam prohibits the depiction of the human form, many people you'd see on billboards would have pixelated eyes." (Or sport sunglasses, making all of Saudi Arabia look like it was sponsored by Ray-Ban.)
All those rules are enforced by the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV), aka the religious police, the holy fuzz, the anti-pig pigs. We'd say it's Orwellian, but even Big Brother wouldn't ban puppies.
The Religious Police Have A Very Strange Role In Daily Life
The idea of religious police might sound terrifying, but as it turns out, Saudi Arabia's CPVPV is a lot like The Blair Witch Project: kind of scary in the '90s, but mostly annoying now.
"For example, they have these huge GMCs. They like to park their cars in front of girls' high schools, women's universities," Aaida told us. "And they have a microphone, and they'll tell every woman who passes by to cover up. If they see a woman standing outside for a relatively long time, they'd ask her, 'What are you doing? Why are you standing here?'"
"Well, cover up regardless."
On rare occasions, the religious cops definitely can ruin someone's day (Adam's friend was once sentenced to 40 lashes for being drunk in public), but mostly they resort to threatening to tell your parents, like a weenie fourth-grader with a badge. Aaida explains: "When I was in university, the reading club organized a book fair. They had two separate corners, one for females and one for male students. And the female coordinator spoke to the male ones, and the RP saw them there, took them in, and they told her, 'You need to sign this confession that says this man was harassing you and we saved you from him. If you don't sign this, we'll call your guardian.' She signed the thing and left."
And yet the religious police aren't all bad. "Let's say, a woman kind of has this sort of man she talks with, and she sends him pictures of herself," Aaida told us. "Sometimes, the guy will blackmail her with it. 'If you don't give me X dollars, I'll publish these pictures' -- something that puts her in danger. This is where the religious police come in. They do this ambush thing, tell her, 'Tell him to come here,' and they bust him," and later hopefully tell his mom about what he's done.
Even Adam's brother has had positive interactions with the CPVPV, like when he was in an accident and they helped him change his tire. But god help you if they see even a hint of butt crack poke out while you're doing it.
There Is An Obvious And Strictly Defined Racial Hierarchy
Saudi Arabia is one of the most scientifically advanced countries in the Middle East. That reputation is reflected in everything, from the vast number of universities dedicated solely to STEM to their precisely calculated racial hierarchy.
"Whenever we drove into the diplomatic quarter in Riyadh at the National Guard checkpoint," Adam recalls, "we were always treated respectfully, with plenty of 'please,' 'sir,' 'welcome' -- no problem at all. But if you're dark or look Arab, your car would get searched. The social hierarchy is: Saudis, Gulf Arabs (excluding Yemen, because they're perceived as country bumpkins and drug addict truck drivers), Americans and Europeans, other Arabs, Indonesians, Filipinos, Pakistanis, then Bangladeshis."
Great. Racist and confusing.
Why such a laser-guided approach to racism? It mostly comes down to the type of jobs foreigners do in the country. Most Westerners move there to be doctors and engineers, so they're at the top of the list and "always get waved through to the front of the line at immigration, ahead of all the other countries," according to Adam. But other nationalities tend to go for manual labor jobs, which in Saudi Arabia means you're not technically human.
"One form of racism," Adam explains, "is that it's not permissible for a woman to be in the car with a male who isn't related to her, but somehow it was acceptable to use a driver or take a cab driven by a Pakistani or a Bangladeshi. I guess it's because in this case, the driver is part of the 'furniture' and completely nonthreatening."
(They're also a necessity - after all, women can't drive cars because, according to a Saudi cleric, seatbelts can destroy their ovaries.)
If this all sounds suspiciously like slavery, there's a reason for that.
Say what you want about Western racism, but at least we don't think of our minorities as gussied-up Barcaloungers. We mostly just shoot them. Which is actually much worse, but, uh ... hey look, another entry!
Dating Is Like Living In A Spy Movie
"Saudi culture is very gender-segregated," Adam explains. "From restaurants to banks, a lot of places have both family sections and men's sections. There's even a women-only mall in Riyadh. Kindergartens are mixed, but from first grade onward, there are separate boys and girls schools. That's why people get creative about how to get in touch with the opposite sex. Back in my day, a popular method was to put your MSN ID on the side of your car and go for a cruise around town in the hope that a girl would spot it and contact you on her own."
"I've always loved you from afar, LongRod420."
Another popular method was the Bluetooth chat. "If the MSN ID trick didn't work out, you could always go to a cafe, sit in the men's section, turn on your Bluetooth, and hope for someone behind the wall in the women's section to see your phone. Then they'd connect to it, and the two of you could text." All while trying to determine how attractive the other person was solely by their emoji usage.
"Red dress dancer! Don't blow this ..."
"In a mixed area like the food court at a mall, a guy might also write his phone number on the back of a McDonald's receipt and then crumple it up and drop it on a fine lady's tray or on the floor next to her table. If she's interested, she can pick it up and unfold it and text him, or she can reject him by flicking it off the table."
Nowadays, people mostly use Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. That takes all the desperate, horny spy action out of courtship. But that may soon change, as Saudi Arabia has already banned Facebook's chat function, and is considering banning the site altogether because they think it might be turning people gay. So start brushing up on your romantic carrier pigeon messages, young people.
Women Are Not Legally Adults
When you take away someone's rights, you have essentially turned that person into a child. But Saudi Arabia is the best Arabia! They can do better than "essentially." Adam told us: "Women aren't adults in Saudi Arabia. My mother didn't have her own residence permit. She was just listed as a dependent on my dad's permit ... I'm not sure if it's still the case, but a woman's mahram could even get a text message if she tried to leave the country."
Being picked up at the lost child kiosk is embarrassing enough at seven; imagine it in your 40s.
That's true, by the way. There is indeed a Saudi app that lets a woman's father/husband/brother/male family pet know when she tries to leave the country. Because how can they be sure that some sicko hasn't lured her away with cute pics of those unholy, irresistible puppies? See? It's all an effort to protect women.
"As a Saudi woman," Aaida explains, "I'm treated as a minor legally. If I want to renew my passport, my guardian has to do that. If I want to get a job, my guardian has to sign that off. It needs to be clear that my guardian is OK with that. Until 10 years ago, my guardian would have access to my bank account, but they stopped that now."
Probably realizing it'd be easier to simply not let women have their own money.
And yet, another Saudi woman we spoke to insists that the country's rules have their occasional upsides: "When you go to some party and, y'know, you have somebody with you, then you will not be talked at so much by people. You're not so much exposed, because you can always refer to your relative -- 'Help me out. This person won't leave me alone.' Sometimes, it may happen that someone wants to talk to you, dance with you, and it's really helpful to have someone who can say, 'She doesn't want to talk to you.'"
So Saudi Arabia treats women like second-class citizens in order to protect them from assholes, who believe they are justified in behaving like assholes because Saudi women are second-class citizens. It's an ouroboros of crap.
Adam is a renowned forum lurker. As an avid Cracked fan, having his pseudonym mentioned in this article is nothing short of the fulfillment of a life-long dream.Cezary Jan Strusiewicz is a Cracked columnist, interviewer, and editor. Contact him at c.j.strusiewicz@gmail.com.
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