“Blood and black ash smeared the once-pristine floors of Kiev’s Hotel Ukraine. Dining tables, hastily shoved together, became makeshift hospital beds for the injured; the cold ground was a crude morgue. A priest knelt next to one man, offering what small comfort he could.
On the bloodiest day in modern Ukrainian history, the 12 lifeless, unnamed men who lay on the floor of the hotel lobby this morning, their bodies loosely covered with sheets, were just a few of the dozens killed in a conflict that has transformed the centre of Ukraine’s capital into a brutal battleground.”