Through February 23, we are marking the 11th anniversary of Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity. It started with a Facebook post summoning protesters to the Independence Monument on Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) on November 21, 2013. It ended when disgraced, corrupt pro-russian president Viktor Yanukovych fled Ukraine for russia in the wee hours of February 22, 2014, and Verkhovna Rada officially removed him from the presidency.

November 30, 2013: Yanukovych sends Berkut riot police to brutally disperse peaceful protestors.

It backfires.

Photo: AFP

Nine days into the rally that became the revolution, Viktor Yanukovych sent the hated Berkut riot police to disperse several hundred peaceful protesters, mostly students, assembled on Maidan. Berkut suppressed mobile phone communications and used batons, stun grenades, and tear gas against the non-violent demonstrators.

Outraged and defiant, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Ukrainians of all ages poured into Maidan on December 1 in support of the demonstrators Berkut had savaged the night before, and "to protect society in the face of crippling authoritarianism."

Maidan wouldn't be empty of protestors again until August 2014.