Ukrainians marked their country’s 35th Independence Day on Monday with great pride — but little fanfare.
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Ukrainians → mark → pride
There was none of the pageantry that accompanied the celebration in the past: Public holidays have been put on hold in Ukraine since February 2022, when Russian dictator Vladimir Putin launched the largest European invasion since World War II.
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Putin → be → II
Amid the daily horrors and ever-present dangers of Russia’s war, and internal debates over the wisdom of a wartime national election, it’s easy to understand why most Ukrainians don’t feel particularly festive.
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Ukrainians → ’ → election
Indeed, it gives freedom-loving people everywhere good reason to celebrate.
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it → give → reason
To understand why, we must place the current war in its historical context.
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we → understand → context
The invasion Putin launched four-plus years ago stunned the world, but it didn’t come completely out of the blue.
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it → launch → blue
On the contrary, it’s merely the latest chapter in a dark epic of imperial aggression stretching back hundreds of years.
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it → ’ → years
Ukraine’s fight for freedom is one of the longest statehood struggles in world history: As far back as 1731, French enlightenment philosopher Voltaire noted that “Ukraine has always aspired to liberty.”
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Ukraine → note → liberty
Even then Russia was engaged in the subjugation of Ukraine — a process that continued for centuries, as generations of Russian czars sought to wipe Ukraine off Europe’s map.
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generations → engage → map
Russian efforts to extinguish Ukrainian identity only intensified during the totalitarian 20th century under a series of Soviet commissars.
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efforts → extinguish → commissars
In the 1930s, Joseph Stalin deliberately starved millions of Ukrainians to death in their own homes as part of a systematic campaign to decapitate Ukraine.
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Stalin → starve → Ukraine
That act of mass murder, the Holodomor, was “the classic example of Soviet genocide” according to Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined that term.
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who → accord → term
Since coming to power in 2000, Vladimir Putin has enthusiastically embraced this genocidal legacy.
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Putin → come → legacy
Like many Russians, he has never come to terms with the collapse of the USSR or the reality of an independent Ukraine.
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he → come → Ukraine
Instead, he has continued to insist Ukrainians are actually Russians (“one people”) while regularly questioning Ukraine’s right to exist, accompanying his extreme anti-Ukrainian rhetoric with policies of increasingly open aggression.
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Ukrainians → continue → aggression
Initially, Putin sought to subvert post-Soviet Ukraine’s fledgling statehood via political, cultural and economic interference in Kyiv’s internal affairs.
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Putin → seek → affairs
When this failed, he resorted to military force.
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he → fail → force
The watershed moment came in February 2014, with the Russian seizure of Crimea, soon followed by the stealth incursion into eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region — both setting the stage for the full-scale invasion of 2022.
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both → come → 2022
Putin has tried to justify his actions in the international arena, claiming that Russia’s fears of an enlarging NATO necessitated invasion.
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fears → try → invasion
He’s pretended to be at war with Ukrainian “Nazis” — a self-evidently absurd accusation to level against a country with a Jewish president.
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He → pretend → president
But when speaking to Russian audiences, Putin has been far more honest about his imperial ambitions.
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Putin → speak → ambitions
Russia, he says, is simply reclaiming its “historical lands.”
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he → say → lands
The crimes of the Russian army in occupied Ukraine mirror Putin’s chilling words.
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crimes → occupy → words
Throughout areas under Kremlin control, all traces of Ukrainian language, culture and history are being ruthlessly removed and replaced by an artificial imperial identity.
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traces → remove → identity
In an echo of earlier Stalinist terror, Putin’s troops have jailed countless thousands of Ukrainians deemed to be potential threats to Russian rule.
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troops → jail → rule
The United Nations has classed these mass arrests as a crime against humanity.
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Nations → class → humanity
Ukrainians understand Putin’s genocidal agenda perfectly well, which is why they’re so determined to fight on.
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they → understand → agenda
They know that if Ukraine stops defending itself, their country will soon cease to exist.
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country → know → itself
Putin is rejecting all Ukrainian calls for a cease-fire, continuing to insist on redress for what he calls the “root causes” of the war — widely regarded as Kremlin code for regime change in Kyiv.
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he → reject → Kyiv
Putin’s maximalist stance makes a mockery of US-led efforts to broker a compromise peace.
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stance → make → peace
Russia’s ongoing invasion also represents a much broader challenge to the global community.
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invasion → represent → community
If Putin is permitted to erase an entire nation in the heart of Europe, it will reverse decades of progress in the fight for democratic freedoms — and plunge the world into a new era of international instability.
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it → permit → instability
In 2022, most experts believed Ukraine would fall in a matter of days.
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Ukraine → believe → days
But nearly five years on, it continues to stand tall — and is now closer to securing true independence than at any time in its troubled history.
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it → continue → history
That’s what makes Ukrainian Independence Day a genuinely miraculous holiday, and an occasion that anyone who values freedom should cheer.
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who → ’ → freedom
Peter Dickinson, a Kyiv-based British journalist, is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert blog.
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Dickinson → base → blog
