The 21st November 2013, the date of the first Euromaidan protests in Kiev. The protests, a result of President Yanukovych's decision to suspend a proposed trade agreement with the EU in favour of renewing stronger economic ties to Russia. The result - wide spread resistance across Ukraine.

The protestors first peacefully occupied the centre of Kiev, the Independence Square, known as the Maidan. Responding to police attacks they secured their encampment, creating a network of defences. They occupied government buildings and formed militias. They organised to challenge the direction and the decisions of their government.

The photographs in this book were taken between the 8th - 10th of February 2014. Forty-eight short hours inside an encampment which had been in situ for three long winter months. They capture life around the Maidan, now known as Euromaidan (European Square).

One week later violence erupted, the worst since Ukraine’s Independence. Maidan became a scene of carnage, of brutal killing, as government forces attempted to remove the protestors using lethal force. Over one hundred protestors and police were killed. Six hundred were wounded. The protestors eventually took control of the parliament on the 22nd of February 2014.

In the days following the violence, President Yanukovych fled Kiev, arriving later to exile in Russia. Ukraine installed an interim president and government with the promise of fresh elections in May 2014. Russia invaded the Crimean peninsula on the 27th February 2014. An act of aggression that has pitched Ukraine into a state of war against Russian separatists in the east of the country ever since.

The changes brought about by the protests, and the occupation of Maidan, have had far reaching implications for Ukraine and the world, with no clear idea or understanding how (or where) their reverberations would be felt next.

David Gould