Ukraine fights on for freedom to shatter centuries of Russian cruelty

Ukrainians marked their country’s 35th Independence Day on Monday with great pride — but little fanfare.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.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.Yet few holidays in the world today are more meaningful than Ukrainian Independence Day.Indeed, it gives freedom-loving people everywhere good reason to celebrate.To understand why, we must place the current war in its historical context.The invasion Putin launched four-plus years ago stunned the world, but it didn’t come completely out of the blue.On the contrary, it’s merely the latest chapter in a dark epic of imperial aggression stretching back hundreds of 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.”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.Russian efforts to extinguish Ukrainian identity only intensified during the totalitarian 20th century under a series of Soviet 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.That act of mass murder, the Holodomor, was “the classic example of Soviet genocide” according to Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined that term.Since coming to power in 2000, Vladimir Putin has enthusiastically embraced this genocidal legacy.Like many Russians, he has never c...