AFTER Viktor Yanukovych, who was then president, fled Ukraine in February 2014, Russian flags began appearing around the Lenin statue in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. Pro-Russian activists clashed with supporters of the Maidan revolution, and some spoke of a “Kharkiv People’s Republic”. But while separatism caught fire in Donetsk and Luhansk, it faltered in Kharkiv. Ukrainian nationalists felled the Lenin statue last autumn, leaving only a shoe. Sergei Yangolenko, commander of the Kharkiv-1 national-guard battalion, says the days when the city might have joined the rebels are over. He keeps Lenin’s giant ear in his office as a trophy.
Nonetheless, Kharkiv, …read more
Source: The Economist
