“My father, due to the events of the time and the conditions of life, was forced to join the Communist Party. Because having three children and not being in the party — well, those were the times, there’s no point in hiding it — if you didn’t actively participate in certain events, you had no prospects. As part of his duties, he was the second secretary of the raikom [District Committee — the highest governing body of the district organization of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union] of the Busk district. And there was this one moment. They [his family] always came to my birthday, every year. And they tried to visit me very often, almost every week. They came. At that time, my father didn’t have a car, but his colleague from the party line did. So he asked him for a ride because there were three sisters, mom, dad — well, a big family. And they decided to come to my birthday. Everything was as usual: everyone was having fun, sitting at the table, and I was running around under the table, standing straight [being very young]. Everyone was there, and my father decided to show me off or something... Everyone was asking me, ‘Maybe you’ll recite a poem for us or sing a song?’ And so, without any second thoughts, without any hidden meaning, nothing of the sort… They put a stool for me, I climbed on it. And, as if it were today, I remember singing them this partisan song: ‘It happened long ago, forty years have passed, our boys fled into the forest. I was still young, I wanted to live so much, but I was made a partisan. They led me into the forest, gave me a sawed-off gun. They gave me a sawed-off gun and cartridges. And they told me: shoot, kill the Muscovites, defend your homeland, Ukraine.’ And around after the end of that week, my father was no longer in the party.”
“Before the Peaceful March, it happened — well, I don’t know, perhaps by God’s will — that my son got sick. And I got a call from home: this and that, the child is ill.” — “When was this?” — “On the 17th, February 17th, just a day before the Peaceful March. I told the guys, I said, there was an opportunity to go [there] because, back then, vans were taking people there and back for free. I said, ‘I’m going home because I absolutely need to, but if they start using force to disperse people, I’ll definitely return.’ And one day, I arrived in the morning, at first light, and by ten or eleven o’clock, I was already getting calls from the Maidan that people were being beaten in Mariinskyi Park.” — “That was on the 18th [of February], right?” — “Yes, that was on the 18th. And on the 18th, I started calling everyone, because we were communicating very intensely then. There was this kind of unity and support... On the 18th, we set out for Kyiv. On the Zhytomyr highway, there were KAMAZ trucks loaded with wood, meant to block our way, to cut off the road. There were police patrols of that time, the DPS, or whatever they were called. The Road Patrol Service they were called. We arrived on the night of the 18th, and I didn’t recognize the Maidan. Everything was burning: they were taking out everything from the tents just to hold back the Berkut [riot police forces], which had already pushed people up to the stage itself. We were driving and calling the guys who had stayed there — they were already saying their goodbyes to us. We were on the road, already near Zhytomyr, telling them, ‘Hold on, guys, we’re coming, we’re almost there.’ Some of them were already saying farewell, thinking they wouldn’t make it.”
"There was this one moment, I still can’t explain it... I took someone’s shield — I didn’t have a shield yet, I got one at night in St. Michael’s Monastery, a second one..." — "A metal one, right?" — "Yeah. At that time, I was going with a plastic shield, and we had these homemade grenades — a big firecracker wrapped in something, and a [Molotov] cocktail. I jumped over the barricade, covering myself with the shield, and started moving toward the [Independence] monument. I managed to ignite it using the ground — everything was burning underfoot — I managed to ignite a Molotov and throw it toward the monument. And I felt two shots, probably rubber bullets, hit my shield. I started retreating, retreating, turned around, and I forgot the spot where I had climbed down the barricade. Can you imagine what a barricade is? A barricade is an impenetrable thing. If I managed to cross it in one spot, then, due to emotions and disorientation, I turned back and couldn’t see how to climb over again. I just approached the barricade, and the guys [from Turka] grabbed me by my body armor, by the straps, and just pulled me back. That’s how the confrontation went."
"At some point, there was a pause, but there were already those who had been killed. There were already dead on Instytutska [Street]. That is, the snipers were shooting… For example, I know Oleksandr Labetskyi, who was also wounded in the gluteal muscles. So there were snipers who shot at moving parts of the body just to injure, to bring people down. There were snipers who aimed at the head. There were snipers who aimed at the heart. There were snipers who aimed at the eye… There was no way around it, you just walked, stepped over them, and looked to see who was still raising a hand, who was still alive, who could still be saved."
"When we carried [Vasyl] Halamai into the Ukraine hotel because by then, there were so many in the Ukraine hotel, they were bringing everyone there, the dead and the wounded. I don’t remember who it was, one of the young nurses — we brought him in, left him there — and someone grabbed my hand and begged me not to go. Just begged me not to go. I understood that… She said to me, ‘What are you going to accomplish there with a bat, with a shield?’ she said. ‘The snipers are killing [people]! Don’t go,’ she said, ‘you’ll die.’ And somehow, that saved me."
Ivan Siryi is a participant in the Revolution of Dignity. He was born on September 29, 1982, in the village of Staryi Mylyatyn, Busk District (now Zolochiv District), Lviv region. In October 2000, he was drafted into the military. However, his service was short-lived — by March 2001, he was discharged due to contracting hepatitis C. From 2003 to 2004, he studied at a Redemptorist theological seminary but became disillusioned with the institution of the Church and left his studies. In the early 2000s, he worked abroad in Russia, Poland, and the Czech Republic in construction. After returning to his home village, he worked as a gas station operator. He arrived at Euromaidan in December 2013 with fellow villagers after the violent dispersal of the peaceful student protest. Initially, he came for the large demonstrations but later stayed, living in the tent installed by Busk residents. He participated in the clashes with security forces from February 18 to 20, 2014, and helped carry the wounded from Instytutska Street. When Russian aggression began in August 2014, he went to the East with fellow Maidan activists from the volunteer unit Dnipro-1. He was not officially enlisted in the armed unit. After suffering a concussion near the village of Pisky, he returned to Lviv for treatment. Since then, he has lived in Lviv with his wife.
