TulipGirl

If you are just starting to follow what is going on in Ukraine, let me help you find the heart of the matter. As our friend Lena wrote,

“. . .2 month ago I guessed that I live in the worst country in the world. I was oppressed when I could not see a dignity in my fellow citizens, willingness to freedom and happiness. . . . November, 22 I started to be really proud of my co-citizens. Now I can see that they are not passive mammals who want just to dig comfortable burrow, to generate they own posterity and to finish life in poverty, pretending that there is no another way. Since November, 22 there are not a crowd on the main square of my country. This is the PEOPLE. . . . And now I know for sure that there are a lot of us. But we are not only the force who able to be the opposition to criminals and cads. It can’t be enough for me, I think. We are the people in the most exalted and humane sense of this word. And not only number turns us to be the force, but exactly these LOVE, FAITH and HOPE which live in everyone now. . .”

Serhii Rakhmanin writes in the Mirror-Weekly,

“Ukraine has been awaiting this day since 1991, when independence fell to the people’s feet as an overripe fruit from a dried tree. At that time we were not ready to digest it. . . .The number of sincere dreamers was too small. There were too few new heroes to form a new type of elite. The same old people kept their offices, having only modified their rhetoric a bit.We got a new state. . . . Yet it proved insufficient to become a nation.

. . .

We have stood this test to be rewarded with a new generation of people.

We do not want to be disillusioned again. Yet even if it happens, today’s events will be remembered by generations to come.”

And please take the time to read Oksana Zabushko’s essay on Ukrainian Solidarity.