Nayem threw his hands into the air: "Just look how they are fucking you . . . The UK and the USA guaranteed our territorial integrity . . .  and if they do nothing. China will be next. But this is the middle of Europe and . . . and they are silent."

Nayem had a pained voice: the pain of a man who knew Russian propaganda could come true. He knew the mysterious Right Sector was growing in strength. He knew Russian invasion meant the promise — of a free, online, EU-standard Ukraine — would turn to shit.

The office watched Russian propaganda. Newscasts were obsessed with the Right Sector and its stubble-faced commander Dmytro Yarosh. Russian TV made the Right Sector the revolution. Anchors calmly explained Yarosh was nothing less than a new Ukrainian Hitler.

Russian TV broadcast fantasies: more than a million were fleeing Right Sector terror into Ukraine. Hysterical fantasies: the Right Sector had shuttered more than a third of the shops in Kiev. According to Russia, the Right Sector was in charge of the security service, while its hoodlums robbed in the streets. And above all, they wanted Jewish blood.

It was almost as if Russia wanted the Right Sector. Why had they appeared from nowhere at the end of the revolution? Why at the revolution's crescendo had Yarosh met Yanukovych? Where had the money come from to rent the four-star Hotel Dnypro as its HQ?

Nayem was frightened. Russia might invade Ukraine, handing the far-Right the revolution. Nayem was an optimist: just give Ukraine stability and it could become a big, chaotic, metaphysical Poland. But Russia was reinforcing Crimea. Twitter flickered with war rumours.

Nayem had started to panic. Yarosh was not Hitler. But it was not all a lie: "If the EU does nothing, then there will be war. What if the Russians invade? If the West does not support us, then Yarosh will become a fairy-tale leader to the people. This man wants to build a military country out of the east and out of the west.

"What will happen if the Russians come and we are alone? We will be alone. And what can we do then? Nothing but terrorism, shootings and partisan war. And then the people will listen to Yarosh. And we will be the next Afghanistan . . . the next Chechnya. And in that case . . . I hate the West."

The Ukrainians who knew if Maidan was a Nazi revolution were, of course, the Jews. That is why I knocked on the door of one of the most famous painters in Kiev — Alexander Roytburd.

He loved painting breasts. Roytburd spoke with his hands, with his cheeks, with his eyes — as if an undercurrent of Yiddish sign language was necessary for his words to be understood.