The Independence Square I’ve strolled through on carefree warm summer’s evenings now feels like the set of a very realistic disaster movie.
The streets are black, caked in soot and the smell of burning is everywhere. In people’s eyes, I see a mixture of elation, fear, resolve, shock, and exhaustion.
Only 48 hours before I arrived on Saturday, on foot, the roads were blocked and barricaded.
My taxi driver had to drop me several streets from my apartment as government snipers were shooting to kill.
Then remarkably the government fell, the president vanished and the riot police simply melted away.
Now, there are no police in this city, no law. Until they form a new government, the people are in charge. But there is no chaos, just an eerie calm.
Barricades of tyres, metal and barbed wire that last week stood as walls between the people and the security forces have now been turned into shrines, bearing photos and the names of the dead.
There are mountains of flowers everywhere, laid down on the streets where loved ones were murdered. It is utterly heartbreaking.
On Sunday evening I stood in the bitterly cold square with thousands of other people. A priest was speaking to the crowd. A young man in his late teens offered me a candle. I took it, lit it and stood watching.
Later, as I was making to leave, former PM Yulia Tymoshenko, then just released from jail, suddenly appeared on the stage in her wheelchair. She was greeted with gracious applause initially, but she remains a controversial figure.
And that’s the problem Ukraine will face in the coming weeks. Who stands for what and whose side are you on?
The challenge of uniting the citizens of the capital may be possible, but travel six hours east of here by bus to the pro-Russian cities on the border and you will not find people tearing down statues of Lenin. Here, many are even waving the old hammer and sickle flag in support of the old regime.
I’m reminded of my visit to Kiev in 2004, not long after the peaceful Orange Revolution, in which Ukraine supposedly threw off its past and moved towards Europe and civilisation.
After the initial euphoria had died down, little changed and soon the old corrupt ways returned.
And now, 10 years on, we are witnessing another revolution. But this time blood has been spilt, the government has fallen, the president has disappeared and the Ukrainian people have had enough.
There are still thousands of people here in Independence Square. It is bitterly cold but everyone is looking out for one other, and soup kitchens are supplying food and tea to the shattered, freezing protesters.
Walking through the tented city I waved to one of the guys I had noticed over the past few days. He beckoned me over and, in halting English, chatted about the recent events.
I asked him why he was still camping out. He told me they would do so until a new government was officially formed.
“If we leave now, before new government come, then old police and KGB come back I think,” he said.
At that, Andrei poured a glug of vodka into a disposable plastic cup, handed it to me and the five of us solemnly toasted Ukraine’s future. As I walked back to my apartment, I passed lines of armed volunteers, with riot shields and batons stolen from the security forces.
They are guarding buildings, not from looters, but to stop the old guard from returning.
I often get despondent when I return from my travels to the UK and hear statements such as: “Ah, I’m not voting in the next election, I can’t be bothered”, or complaints about terrible roads, failing schools, NHS, police and the political system.
I’m the first to admit the UK is far from perfect, but the critics ought to spare a thought for Ukraine and her people. Believe me, we don’t even know we’re living.