I was lucky enough to know someone in the city - the formidable polyglot Nata, with whom I'd been trading insults online for several years. She's fluent in Ukrainian and Russian and also speaks English, German and Spanish (and probably more). A very convenient person to know!
Most of Kiev was bombed/shelled pretty heavily during WW2, but fortunately it was not rebuilt in the typical neo-stalinist style of ex-commie cities (Warszaw and St Petersburg come to mind). The streets are as clean as anything you'll find in the west, and there are some really nice buildings to be seen. One ever present fixture is the Orthodox cathedrals, there are several of them and they're all very colorful and grand looking:
Needless to say, I couldn't be bothered to set foot in them, though I did visit the former cave monastery of Pechersk Lavra, which has been turned into a museum area (some run by the church, some by the government). I didn't go down into the caves, but did enjoy the incredible museum of miniatures and the historical museum (which was somewhat less than incredible). One of the churches on the site:
I also went to the outdoors part of the War Museum (we came too late to go inside), which mainly contains old Russkie tanks and guns and such, plus a bunch of stone reliefs in the typical heroic worker style:
The indoors part of the museum is housed inside this HUGE "Motherland Statue" - quite impressive:
Yours truly surrendering to a T-55:
