In January 2014 Ukraine was in fire of revolution. Central streets of it’s capital Kyiv were in flames, police violence reached it’s absurd maximum, people stopped waiting for a peaceful miracle and started real fight. Terms like Molotov cocktail, gas grenade or rubber bullets very fast became a part of everyday conversation.
And Sokyra is a short story from one of those days…
When in the cold January morning Dmytro (Kotra) was packing his car with bottles, machine oil, benzin, heavy metal accessories, gas masks and other riot equipment to be delivered to Maidan, he got a phone call from his old friend and colleague Edward Sol, who said that his car got broken and he asked if Dmytro could pick him up on the way to Maidan. And so, after all packing was done, Dmytro together with Zavoloka went to Ed’s house, where Edward was already waiting with his bags full of prepared goods.
Edward and Kotra lived outside of Kyiv and normally it would take some time to get to the city. But that cold day snow was extremely heavy and their car was moving especially slow. On the way to the Kyiv central part, crossing police block posts who were checking every second car, colleagues had a lot of time to discuss their preparations – what did they have, how much, where they should deliver and which ammunition to be left for themselves for protection and attacking both.
During this conversation, when describing what was in a trunk, among other things Kotra mention his axe, which was properly prepared not to leave finger prints and also good sharpened. Calm and intelligent discussion started between both artists – would it be too much to have an axe with them; if yes, then how it can be used and if they were ready to use it against police or not; are they ready for consequences when got caught by police with this hatchet; are they ready to actually kill with their own hands..
Slowly approaching destination point colleagues agreed to postpone usage of the hatchet and concentrate on delivering parts for molotovs and napalm, and store that axe somewhere very close to where the fights were happening and wait a little, until situation might turn the way when using such weapons would not need to be discussed.
After all this, old axe was not used and is still stored in the same hidden place where artists put it that cold January day of 2014.