(19 Feb 2015) One year after more than one hundred people lost their lives when snipers opened fire at protesters at a central Kiev square, surviving activists walked the Maidan (independence) Square and took part in commemorations remembering the tragic events.
Activists had taken to the streets for months to protest against the then-president Viktor Yanukovych's decision to freeze ties with the European Union in November 2013.
The deadly clashes, which eventually led to Yanukovych's demise, started on the night of 18 January when police tried to move protestors back, and continued for three days.
Protesters advanced on police lines in the heart of the Ukrainian capital, prompting government snipers to shoot back and kill scores of people in the country's deadliest day since the break-up of the Soviet Union a quarter-century ago.
Officials estimated that 77 people died on 20 February 2014, but the numbers were later increased to more than 100, prompting people to name the dead activists the "heavenly hundred".
Ihor Zastavnyi, a 21-year-old woodworker, was one of those who joined the protests but survived, despite sustaining injuries that cost him his left leg.
Walking to Maidan with a slight limp, he recalls the day that changed his life.
Zastavnyi arrived at Maidan for the first time after watching on TV that students supporting the European integration of Ukraine had been beaten.
He spent more than one and a half months taking part in the protest, but he remembers 20 February vividly.
"I was extremely taken aback when came to Maidan on 20 February. It looked like hell. I realised in that moment that something serious would happen, a battle, the last battle, maybe," he said.
Soon after his realisation, Zastavnyi was shot three times.
"I got an injury to my arm and stomach," he said standing on the very place where he was hit and looking at photos from the day.
"Then I started to move back as I was unable to stand up and was shot in the leg."
Zastavnyi's health condition turned critical and because he lost too much blood doctors couldn't save his leg.
On Wednesday, he met other activists on Maidan and they reminisced as they looked at photos from the tragic day one year ago.
The activists said they had almost become like family and one of them called Zastavnyi "our Maidan hero".
Zastavnyi said he would like to see those who shot at the protesters taken to court and punished.
Investigations are still ongoing and at a cabinet meeting Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said a report was expected by the end of the week.
The unfolding events later spilled into war in eastern Ukraine which has killed 5,600 people and forced over a million to flee their homes since fighting began in April, a month after Russia annexed the mostly Russian-speaking Crimean Peninsula.
Some war weary Ukrainians have been looking back at the start of the protests and asking themselves if it was all worth it.
Zastavnyi, however, had no doubts.
"All this was not in vain," he said.
"It's impossible even to think like this. When a person wants to give everything and devote himself to something as the 'heavenly hundred' did, it can't be for nothing. Because people gave the best they had. Their lives."
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