The Euromaidan's first fatality Serhiy Nihoyan would have been 23 today. To mark his birthday, here's an excerpt from RFE/RL's report on his life and death back in 2014:
The first victim identified was Serhiy Nihoyan, a 21-year-old from Bereznovativka, a small village outside the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk.
Nihoyan's Armenian parents reportedly immigrated to Ukraine from the embattled enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in 1992, a year before Serhiy was born.
His father, Garik, told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service that he had hoped to discourage his son from joining the Euromaidan protesters but that Serhiy, who had recently fallen into a depression after breaking up with his girlfriend, had insisted on traveling to Kyiv.
"We were very critical of his decision from the start, but he wouldn't listen," he said. "We asked if someone was forcing him to go, but he said, 'No, no one's forcing me, I can leave whenever I want.' But he had other problems, with a girl. He was depressed, he started growing a beard. And then he contacted some girl over the Internet, and the next day he got up and left."
Activists say Nihoyan, with his distinctive dark beard, was a permanent fixture from early December at the Euromaidan demonstrations, where he chopped wood or served as security -- standing guard on the perimeter of the crowd, often with the red-blue-and-orange Armenian flag draped around his shoulders.
Many on January 22 referred to him as a "hero" and "Euromaidan's first martyr."
One woman recounted on Facebook how she met him after bringing hot tea to the protest: "Unlike a lot of the other guards, he didn't approach me -- he didn't leave his post. I walked up to him myself, and only then he took the tea and gratefully kissed my hand."
Many supporters circulated a video showing Nihoyan standing at the protests and raising a clenched fist as he recites the following passage from "The Caucasus," a poem by Ukraine's 19th-century poet and artist Taras Shevchenko that depicts the struggle of Circassians to free themselves from Russian oppression:
And glory, freedom's knights, to you,
Whom God will not forsake.
Keep fighting -- you are sure to win!
God helps you in your fight!
For fame and freedom march with you,
And right is on your side!
Read the entire article here
Good morning. Here's a few of the things that grabbed our attention overnight:
This ends our live blogging for August 1. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.