A beacon

“It is impossible to conquer a nation determined to be free!” — Thomas Paine.

Ukraine has been “determined to be free” for so long that this region almost has no other history but the struggle for sovereignty and cultural integrity.

Look upon your native country,
On this peaceful eden;
Love with overflowing heart
This expanse of ruin!
Break your chains and live as brothers!
Do not try to seek,
Do not ask in foreign lands
For what can never be
Even in heaven, let alone
In a foreign region...
In one's own house,—one's own truth,
One's own might and freedom.
There is no other Ukraina

This is from a poem written in 1845 by Taras Shevchenko, the national poet of Ukraine.

Yes, 180 years ago.

But the Ukrainian struggle to create and keep alive independence and cultural integrity goes back centuries. Let that sink in for a moment: centuries.

Different parts of the area that is today Ukraine were invaded and occupied by (settle in for the list): the Cimmerians, Scythians, and Sarmatians, the Goths, Huns, Bulgars, Avars, Khazars, and Magyars. The Slavs, the Mongols, the Cossacks. Lithuania, Poland, Russia. In the aftermath of World War, I and the Russian Revolution of 1917, most of the Ukrainian region became a republic of the Soviet Union. Then the Nazis invaded and took over. (Between 1941 and 1943 SS squads massacred more than 30,000 Jews in Baba Yar, on the northern edge of the city of Kyiv.) Then the Soviets marched through and regained control.

Finally, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukraine declared independence, but the struggles continued with almost 30 years of political reforms, disputed elections, setbacks, and two mass protest movements.

In 2019 Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president. In late 2021 Russia began a military buildup along its border with Ukraine, and in February 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine. Ukrainian forces successfully defended their capital—an extraordinary feat, a give-me-liberty-or-give-me-death moment--and launched a counteroffensive. But by 2023 the front lines had largely stagnated, and the conflict became a war of attrition.

And a war of mass casualties. The Wall Street Journal reported more than 1 million Ukrainians and Russians killed or wounded. The U.N. reports 3.7 million internally displaced Ukrainians and 6.9 million refugees.

This is a country deeply rooted in the history of struggle for independence, in cultural survival, and in resistance against oppression. They will not be conquered.

We used to be a beacon for liberty, or we said we were.

Ukraine is the beacon now.