My lunch companion pulled two Israeli IWI Jericho 541 handguns from his briefcase and plonked them on the bench. “What do you think? Needed in Donbas, you know”.
Bloody Nora! I was headed to see a children’s matinee performance of Rimsky Korsakov’s The Tale of Tsar Saltan, based on Pushkin’s 1831 verse fairy tale, and a casual, pre-performance Georgian cuisine lunch was about to turn into a war zone.
Normal for Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv; where bullet holes from the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution still pockmark walls and lamp posts, and photo-shrines of the 130 (probably a low estimate) fallen demonstrators adorn park railings are mostly topped with crossed Blue/Green and Red/Black flags, of Ukraine and the unofficial paramilitary force, Ukrainian Volunteer Corps.
