The past decade was perhaps the most challenging in Ukraine’s post-Soviet history.
At its very beginning, a pro-Russian president was voted in and quickly became a dictator. He dragged Ukraine further away from Europe and it took millions of people in the streets, their courage, willpower and self-sacrifice to depose the tyrant. More than 100 people were killed to reverse a mistake made peacefully at the voting booths.
Russia didn’t let go and waged a war against Ukraine, taking more than 13,000 lives, injuring over 40,000 people and displacing 1.5 million. The death toll keeps rising as Russia continues its war and still holds Crimea and parts of Donbas in its iron grip — a total of 7 percent of Ukraine’s territory now in the Kremlin’s hands.
For most of the decade, and too much of its history, Ukraine has been defending its sovereignty from a warmongering neighbor.
At home, it has fought a never-ending war against corruption and poverty, but oligarchs and corrupt vested interests keep getting in the way of a truly democratic society, including rule of law and economic competition. It’s revealing that a nation with 11,000 prosecutors, 300,000 Interior Ministry employees, 8,000 judges and 40,000 SBU agents can’t hold anyone accountable for murder and serious financial crimes. The vast apparatus was put in place to protect those in power, not hold them accountable.
By the end of this turbulent decade, frustrations were so high that Ukrainians this spring voted in a showman, Volodymyr Zelensky, with no political experience to lead them to a better future. And they gave him a majority in parliament, voting simply for the Servant of the People candidate in the July elections.
Yet when we summarize this decade, we think of hope, of willpower, of self-sacrifice and of those who are changing the country. We think of the new generation that has taken power and how much better they are than their communist predecessors who not so long ago governed Ukraine.
Ukrainians stood up for their rights during the EuroMaidan Revolution. Ukrainians stood up for their country, when volunteers took up arms against Russian aggression and when ordinary people provided supplies to the army when the state couldn’t. Ukrainians won’t allow their country to slide back into darkness. We have seen evidence of that on multiple occasions this decade.
We enjoy freedom of speech because we fought for it on the streets and through the power of words. We enjoy freedom of expression because we were vocal about our beliefs. And we enjoy the right to vote, a practice so rare in post-Soviet countries, because we earned it.
No one is taking that from us. This decade was filled with grief, yet we learned a lot. We learned to rely on ourselves. We learned that we can overcome any obstacle.
This decade shaped the Ukrainian nation. We recognized our heroes, we emphasized our culture, we gained respect for our language.
And even after a decade as tumultuous as this one, we are confident as we look ahead. A bright future awaits us. We know because we are ready to fight for it. We also know there are many battles ahead in the quest for a just society.
