made a final notorious charge up the slope of the Maidan toward the Hotel Ukraine, snipers fired on them from above, led by a unit of brutal pro-Russian militarized police known as the Berkut—Ukrainian for “eagle.” Many Ukrainians believe the Berkut were joined by actual Russian soldiers brought in by Yanukovich. The death toll was 103 protesters, a group now immortalized as the “Heavenly Hundred”—the same martyrs whose lives were being memorialized on the Maidan on my first night in Kyiv.
