A protester frantically waves his hands to stop a Polish reporter who is trying to get closer to the front of the crowd where clashes between demonstrators and the police have started. Using a combination of Ukrainian and Polish, he warns the reporter that journalists should be very careful on the frontline – police snipers target and shoot people who wear bright press jackets or those carrying video cameras.

Minutes later, the same person approaches the reporter again to give him a mask because the place is filled with tear gas and it is hard to breathe. This was only one of numerous instances of mutual aid that continues to be so prominent in the largest and longest protest in the history of independent Ukraine.

Currently international news outlets are projecting images of violent confrontation: protesters throwing Molotov cocktails and the police retaliating with gunfire and occasionally throwing the same bottles with flammable mixture back at the people. However, due to its pursuit of sensationalism and vivid images, the majority of international media has overlooked something much more significant than today’s radical action: the power of self-organisation that makes these Ukrainian protests one of the most impressive grassroots movements of the twenty-first century.

Many Ukrainians joined the protest on day one – November 21. It was the Facebook post of a prominent Ukrainian journalist, Mustafa Nayem, that sparked resistance against a government that had betrayed the hopes of so many young people by refusing to move closer to the European Union.

Nine years ago with the ‘Orange Revolution’ of 2004, there was one party and one leader that led the way. This time the opposition leaders had no other option but to join forces with civic organisations and grassroots movements to resist the regime of Viktor Yanukovych that effectively monopolised power.

You could see the extent of civic activism in almost any area of life at the Maidan, the central square in Kiev where demonstrations are taking place. Dmytro Drobot, an activist from the eastern city of Kharkiv and a student of medicine, has organised a group of volunteers that provide medical help to everyone who has suffered injury at the hands of the riot police. The House of Trade Unions has been transformed into a headquarters for protesters, with a spacious kitchen on the first floor.

A group of Cambridge alumni and students, myself included, volunteered in the kitchen, making sandwiches and porridge, and carrying heavy bags with sugar and meat. The hardest part, however, was not working but getting the job; the queues of people willing to help filled the building morning and night.

Coordinators of the protest recently made an appeal across online social networks for medicine and diapers (excellent at absorbing blood). The people of Kiev donated drugs and nappies on such a scale that in just a few hours a new message urged the people to stop donating medicine because there was not enough storage space. Once the call for warm clothes, bread, tea and coffee was published, people from all over Kiev brought everything they could.

Most of these people will never make the headlines of international papers. Hardly anyone knows their names. At such moments the words of the Ukrainian national anthem, “souls and bodies we shall lay down for our freedom”, acquire their true sense. The words that unite hundreds of thousands of people in their aspiration to be called a Ukrainian, and European, nation.