A year ago to the day, almost 50 activists in Kiev’s Maidan, or Independence Square, were killed, and close to a hundred more were injured in the bloodiest day of revolution protests.
Now, Ukraine is a powder keg. A ceasefire is in shambles. Debaltseve, a town at the heart of the battle between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists, is devastated.
The ramifications for the West are huge because the conflict in eastern Ukraine has hiked tensions with Russia to a level not seen since the end of the Cold War.
A day of commemorations for those who lost their lives in the protests a year ago will culminate in a concert in the Maidan on Friday evening.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko will give an address at a ceremony featuring music, poetry and the lighting of candles. He will also present awards to the families of activists who died.
According to the prosecutor’s office, 77 people were killed in total during days of protests, 49 of them on February 20, 2014, when, protesters say, government snipers opened fire on them.
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A strongly worded report issued Friday by a committee of the UK House of Lords said the European Union had underestimated the level of Russian animosity over moves to build closer EU-Ukraine ties and had been slow to “adapt to the realities of the Russia we have today.”
“Russia is increasingly defining itself as separate from, and as a rival to, the EU,” the report by the Lords’ European Union Committee said.
“The EU’s relationship with Russia has for too long been based on the optimistic premise that Russia has been on a trajectory towards becoming a democratic ‘European’ country. This has not been the case.”
The report is also highly critical of the way in which competing national interests within the European Union made it hard to achieve a united policy on Russia.
If no progress is made in resolving the crisis, the European Union should use sanctions to target people close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, rather than mid-ranking officials in Crimea, the report said. It should also consider extending sanctions to the Russian financial sector.
CNN’s Frederik Pleitgen reported from Kiev, and Laura Smith-Spark wrote and reported from London. CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh, Radina Gigova, Laura Perez Maestro and Michael Holmes contributed to this report.
