2012. We are sitting in a small lecture room, listening intently to the speaker. He speaks softly, smiling, in simple language with a slight accent. I forget that I am supposed to be taking notes. I am living through his life story right there in that room, and I engrave his words about the state, civil society, personal responsibility, the values of freedom and human dignity in my memory for good. He teaches us to dare to dream, to think globally and act locally. He believes in Ukrainian youth — which means he believes in us.
It was a lecture by Bohdan Havrylyshyn.
I have often found myself thinking over the years: what if that meeting had never happened? What if so many others had not taken place?
Think for a moment whether your personal and professional journey would have been the same if you had not read those particular texts or heard those particular words that motivated you and showed you the way. Would your most important decisions in life still have been what they are now?
Communities always give us one essential thing — a values-based lens, a compass for how we see the world. That compass has always pointed towards unity around a strong, democratic Ukrainian state.
Today, our unity is a military strategy, where everyone works at the very limit of their effectiveness, at the edge of their capabilities, to defend our statehood and preserve Ukrainian identity.
Unity has saved us — that is a fact. We are a people who have given a clear answer: to be. We responded by coming together in an unprecedented way at the start of the invasion. Our horizontal ties became life-saving routes; our solidarity gave rise to a powerful volunteer movement that astonished the world.
We became people who had been given a new kind of strength. Unity was no illusion when families from the east arrived at our volunteer centre in Volochysk in house slippers, without belongings or warm clothes, and local residents took them into their homes. A few days later they would return and stay with us to volunteer for others.
I saw queues to give blood and queues to give money, queues to join the army and queues to enrol in territorial defence volunteer units.
That unity was tangible; it was felt both by those who needed help and by those who offered it selflessly. We all made the decision to resist. Society switched into survival mode.
In the fourth year of this exhausting full-scale war, we need to recalibrate those settings. We are under pressure from the Russian army along the line of contact and we live with the pain of daily losses.
The crushing exhaustion in the army and the shortage of people in our units have already led to critical fractures running through Ukrainian society. They are eroding our unity — when a civilian turns on a service member deep in the rear of the very state that soldier has been defending.
When the consequences of corruption scandals are not only financial losses and damage to democratic processes, but also total mistrust and public disillusionment. And it is hardest of all for those in uniform, because double standards and injustice devalue their service.
The worst thing that can happen to us is to buckle under internal pressure, to set swinging the pendulum of mistrust and mutual accusations. Without an honest conversation with one another, without dialogue between the authorities and citizens, and in the absence of unity, we once again risk Ukrainian statehood.
We have been here before. That is why, in our unit, we study history — so that soldiers can analyse the causes of the Russian–Ukrainian war, understand the value of the state and why we take responsibility for it. To realise that Russia will never reconcile itself to the existence of a sovereign Ukraine, and that this war, in one form or another, will continue — and no ceasefire is capable of becoming true peace.
So, we do not have many options: we must unite in the fight for our own state.
‘We will endure everything. We have endured worse. We survived the Holodomor. But the roots of our nation are alive,’ Bohdan Havrylyshyn believed.
This is not our first war with Moscow, but it is a different one: technological, highly intelligent, lightning-fast. It demands that we fight effectively, drawing on technology and intellect.
I am surrounded by young people: UAV and rocket system operators, ISTAR and EW/ES specialists, engineers, sappers, artillery crews and infantry. Many young people are ready to build a new culture of the Ukrainian armed forces. Young Ukrainian women and men in whom Bohdan Havrylyshyn placed so much hope. War was never their great dream.
Yet in one respect the world’s most influential Ukrainian was not mistaken: whether with weapons in the ranks of the army or with slogans on the ‘Cardboard Maidan’, our young people have taken responsibility for Ukraine’s future.
Unity has always given us strength in critical moments. The roots of our nation are alive.
In 2022, at the 10th World Forum for Democracy in Strasbourg, the Ukrainian flag was unfurled in the middle of the plenary hall at the Council of Europe headquarters. At that very moment, the phones of the Ukrainian delegation filled with the sound of air-raid sirens — a missile threat back home in Ukraine. I took the microphone and switched it to loudspeaker mode. I wanted everyone to hear our pain, and to help rally the world around the Ukrainian flag. And I believe we can do this, because we stand united.
We must continue to carry the Ukrainian flag forward, to prove that we have the strength and unity — as we did in 1991, in 2022 and now.
Glory to Ukraine!
