Victory Square from our window in the Hotel Lybid, on the edge of downtown Kiev.  According to newpapers and official statistics, Ukraine is an economic basket case, but it would be hard to tell it from walking around Kiev.  The streets are busy and the shops are full of goods and shoppers.  Of the three most famous cities in the former Soviet Union (Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kiev), Kiev is certainly the most picturesque, being built on a series of hills with numerous older buildings in a great variety of styles.  There is extensive parkland, partly because there are large areas too steep to build on, as well as large numbers of street trees.
 
 

Khreshchatyk, the main, fashionable shopping street in central Kiev, is closed to automobiles on the weekend.



Sophia square, near St. Sophia Cathedral, with the statue of Chmelnitsky and St. Michael's Monastery.  (See the page of Moscow Metro art, for another view of this square.)