Viktor Yanukovych’s palace is full of tasteless treasures – and London auction-house tags

 Kiev

On a cobbled street above the Maidan, an elderly man dressed in fatigues rubs his stubble in the morning sunshine. Would I like a lesson in throwing Molotov cocktails? He picks up a bottle with a long wire loop for a handle, and leads me to a burnt-out public lavatory. A match to the rags stuffed in the bottle’s mouth; an overarm swing, and the bottles smashes against the far wall, flames licking round broken stalls. Would I like to pose for a photo? A young American who has stopped to watch takes up the offer. Three months after protests toppled Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, the Maidan has turned into a tourist attraction.

The scene of the protests is still an impressive sight. Head-high, six-foot-thick barricades block off the entrances to Kiev’s main thoroughfare. Beyond, woodsmoke spills from stovepipes above a line of khaki tents, each with its Tupperware box soliciting donations ‘for the Maidan’. Souvenir stalls offer floral headbands and doormats decorated with Yanukovych’s face. There are impromptu shrines, bright with flowers and tea-lights, in memory of the hundred-odd protestors shot dead by government snipers. Flags flutter — the sky blue and wheat gold of Ukraine, and the more dubious red and black of the second world war Ukrainian Partisan Army. Most instructive of Kiev’s new attractions is an exhibition at the National Art Gallery of items recovered from Yanukovych’s notoriously palatial suburban ‘dacha’. Spread over half a dozen rooms, it is a feast of dictator chic: a dried crocodile skin; portraits of the great man in beaten gold and amber; furniture from Baldi, an Italian firm who specialise in making bathtubs out of rock crystal and cladding pianos in malachite. The two Baldi tables on display (one sporting dazzling winged lions, the other pointy-breasted goddesses) retail for £75,895 and £36,200.