Hôtel Ukraine, 2024
In the heart of Kiev, the days are numbered for the emblematic Hotel Ukrayina.
Put up for sale to finance the war effort by its owner, the Ukrainian state, the Hotel Ukraine is set to close its doors after 83 years in business.
Guillaume Herbaut visited the hotel in May 2024 and wandered among the last guests in the corridors of a veritable institution that has been a silent witness to the entire history of Ukraine since the Second World War : inaugurated under the Soviet Union (its name was originally Hotel Moscow), it housed the most influential political figures in the East in the immediate post-war period, and its walls have trembled under the jolts of the country’s recent history.
The hotel was built at the same time as the rest of the political district, after the Second World War, by the architects commissioned to rebuild the capital on the model of Moscow.
Standing in the middle of Independence Square, the hotel’s illuminated sign was already present as a backdrop to the Orange Revolution, the popular uprising that followed the 2004 presidential elections.
The establishment was also used as a morgue during the Maïdan revolution in 2014, when Ukrainians declared their intention to get closer to the European Union.
While the few guests try to rest despite the routine alarms and trips back and forth to the fallout shelter in the basement, the employees hide their concern about the instability of their jobs, as well as the political future of the country as a whole.
Today, the hotel symbolizes the past splendor of a bygone era, left pending by the onset of war.
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