Afghan veteran Grisha 'ready to fight to death' in Kiev
Kiev (AFP) - With a blue beret perched on his head and dressed in army camouflage, Grisha keeps guard behind one of the barricades erected by protestors on Kiev's Independence Square.
"We are ready to fight to the death against these bandits," said the veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan.
"We are in solidarity, we are not afraid of anything," said the strongly-built 52-year-old man with piercing blue eyes, speaking in a calm tone.
He gave his name as Grisha, a diminutive for Grygoriy, while refusing to give his surname because he "is no hero."
He said he spent four years as a paratrooper during the Soviet war in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989 and now works as a driver in Kryviy Rig, an industrial town in eastern Ukraine.
He arrived last Saturday and joined other former members of the armed forces who conduct regular "patrols" of the Independence Square, which has been occupied for three weeks by opposition protesters calling for closer ties with the European Union.
After the police's attempt to storm the protest on Wednesday, the pro-European movement has beefed up its organisational skills and the square has taken on something of the atmosphere of an entrenched army camp.
The makeshift roadblocks torn down by police have been swiftly replaced with real barricades, towering more than two metres and reinforced with iron bars and sandbags packed with snow.
'These people will not compromise'
Grisha was standing behind one of them, draped with Ukrainian and European Union flags, blocking the Khreshchatyk, a large street that crosses Independence Square and is partly occupied by protesters.
For the last five days, the former soldier said he has slept little, just grabbing a few hours sleep whenever he could in one of the tents set up directly on the tarmac of the Ukrainian capital's central square.
When hundreds of riot police were deployed in the early hours of Wednesday, he was one of those to face them in a human chain "without violence."
"There were some women and children behind us," said the protester, who was hardened by his service in Afghanistan and then by two years in a KGB prison for having deserted to go and see his mother.
The ex-paratrooper, who said he was "betrayed" by President Viktor Yanukovych's refusal to sign a pact with the European Union, added that he had no doubt that there would be fresh attempts to storm the square.
"Those people won't stop at that. They will not compromise. We will also stay here until the end," he said.
To one side of the barricade, protesters were warming themselves in groups of four or five around braziers, keeping watch day and night despite the freezing temperatures.
"We don't know what the authorities are planning. They have no way out," said one of them, Artur Madatian, sitting on a makeshift bench made of logs and planks.
"We need to be prepared at all times."
With a black wool hat pulled over his eyes, he pointed to the snow that the most dedicated protesters have packed on the barricade.
"Touch it, it's as hard as rock!"
The 39-year-old father had come from Lviv, a city in western Ukraine close to the Polish border where there is strong support for closer European integration. He set out on the 500-kilometre (311-mile) journey after seeing the images of hundreds of riot police forcibly removing protesters.
"The more the authorities are violent, the more we get organised," said Madatian, who had only just arrived.
"We will stay here as long as we have the strength."
