Kiev's Russian Roulette

After deposing a despised President, Ukrainians are watching another powerful leader: the one in the Kremlin

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Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for TIME

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The revolutionaries of Independence Square were mostly westerners, and many of the police ranged against them were from the east. For the victors, Yanukovych's ouster represents triumph and hope for integration into Western Europe, which they see as the silver bullet that will fix Ukraine's culture of economic corruption and political thuggery. That's why Anastasia Monzhara, 24, a store clerk, joined the protests in December: Yanukovych's embrace of Russia, she says, was retrograde. "People got used to the idea that we were moving forward in a new direction, toward Europe finally, not backward again to Russia," she says.

For many easterners, even those who were no fans of Yanukovych, the collapse of his government represents tragedy and threat. Born and raised in Sevastopol, Vlad Roditelev, 21, joined the police force in 2012. When the government called reinforcements to Kiev in December, he considered the assignment a noble calling. Russian TV networks popular in Sevastopol were calling the revolutionaries Western-funded Nazi sympathizers, pointedly reminding viewers that nationalist fighters in Ukraine's west initially sided with German invaders in World War II, believing the Nazis would grant their country independence from Russia. "I felt pride," Roditelev says. "We were protecting our city from fascists."

What he saw from his side of the barricades reinforced that narrative. The protesters often carried the black-and-red flag of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, and neo-Nazi imagery--a variant of the Celtic cross, or the number 88--cropped up too. Roditelev was reminded of Russia's antigovernment protests in 2011--12, which were swiftly stamped out. "Putin keeps everything under control," Roditelev says. "In Russia you'll get thrown in jail for waving a fascist flag. But here it's all allowed."

The triumph of the protesters has left Roditelev despondent as he braces for retribution. "Now they'll choose a new prosecutor general, and then what? They can come after all of us." It is time, he says, to close ranks around his own, the ethnic Russian majority of Sevastopol. "It's a civil war now," he says. "We just have to defend our own city. The country is lost."

If it does come to civil war, Crimeans know where they can turn for help. On Feb. 19, three days before Yanukovych fled, Tatyana Yermakova, a prominent pro-Russian activist in Sevastopol, sent an urgent plea for help to Moscow. The email was addressed to Putin, his Minister of Defense and the chairman of the defense committee in Russia's parliament. Yermakova, 59, warned of civil war, nefarious NATO intervention and even genocide. "On behalf of the residents of the city of Sevastopol," she wrote, "we appeal to Russia with a request to intervene in the unfolding situation and come to the defense of the Russian population of the Crimea."

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