Spot News, 2nd prize
Final Fight for Maidan
Jérôme Sessini
Magnum Photos for De Standaard
Magnum Photos for De Standaard
19 February, 2014
After several months of violence, anti-government protesters remained mobilized by holding barricades in Kiev’s Independence Square, known simply as the Maidan.
Jérôme Sessini
He initiates his own practice, shooting people, landscapes, and daily lives of those around his native Eastern France (with Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, Mark Cohen in mind). Ses...
A deserted avenue near the Maidan after violent clashes between protestors and Ukrainian police.
Protests broke out in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, in November 2013, after President Viktor Yanukovych rejected a trade deal with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia. Thousands of pro-European supporters gathered on the city’s Independence Square, known as the Maidan, in an occupation that would last for months.
Ongoing violence hit a peak on 18 February. Over the next three days, more than 70 people, both protestors and law enforcers, were killed by gunfire, with each side blaming the other for starting the shooting. President Yanukovych fled the country on 21 February, and the pro-European Petro Poroshenko was elected Ukraine’s new president in May.
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