My friend Leonid Shvets is a long-time journalist, commentator, and editor. He was born in Belarus and came to Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine, to go to school, then moved to Kiev for work.

To be on the other side of the law-and-order machine in this country is awful. It is dehumanizing and degrading and deforming. It fills you with a helpless rage because, once there, you can only make things worse for yourself by speaking up.

I met with an Automaidan activist who was part of a self-appointed group drafting a lustration law for parliament, which would exclude from political life people who actively participated in Yanukovych's criminal regime.

Keith Gessen Quotes