Ukraine's day of independence matters to us all
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy continues to pound the tocsin for his brave and beleaguered country, while US politicians cast doubt on America's commitment
Ten years ago, I doubt anyone in the UK outside the diaspora community would have known that 24 August was Ukrainian Independence Day. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukrainians had celebrated—perhaps “commemorated” is a better word—22 January as their national day, the date on which in 1918 the Ukrainian People’s Republic had declared its independence from Russia. The UK recognised the new state the same day, and HM consul-general for South Russia, John Picton Bagge, became chargé d’affaires in Kyiv. But it would last not much more than a year, before the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic was proclaimed on 10 March 1919; it was admitted to the USSR at the end of 1922.
The first post-Soviet celebration of freedom was held on 16 July 1991, the anniversary of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine. The Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR adopted the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine on 24 August that year, and so there the date has remained. The Ukrainian government has often celebrated with a military parade through the capital, Kyiv, but no parade had been held since the Russian invasion last year. This week, the wrecks of destroyed Russian armoured vehicles have been lined up along Kreshchatyk in central Kyiv, a perfectly apt, grim, but determined expression by the government of the national mood.
Despite the weight of events which rush in on us every day, despite our overwhelmed, cynical, jaded palates for political events, we have to remember that there is a hot war going on in Europe; not just a hot war, but a huge clash between two nation states, with a horrifying butcher’s bill: estimates suggest that 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, while between 100,000 and 120,000 have been wounded; on the invaders’s side, Russia has lost 120,000 dead and 170-180,000 injured. In addition, the United Nations claims that 9,444 Ukrainian civilians have been killed and 16,940 injured.
To put this in context, insofar as we can ever contextualise that scale of death, more Russian soldiers have keen killed in 18 months, by far, than US and UK service personnel combined have died since the end of the Second World War. Perhaps more pertinently, it is one of the well-worn tenets of recent history that one of the contributory factors to the collapse of the Soviet Union was the high cost of its invasion and conflict in Afghanistan. That unbearably high price was in the region of 15,000 dead over 10 years: Putin has lost 120,000 in 18 months.
The outstanding figure of the conflict in Ukraine has, of course, been President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. A Russian-speaking Jew from central Ukraine, his parents were professionals—a professor of cybernetics and an engineer—while his great-grandparents and three great-great uncles died in the Holocaust. He was an actor and comedian (he is the Ukrainian voice of Paddington Bear) who, in 2015, starred in a political satire called Servant of the People, in which he played a history teacher who was unexpectedly elected president of Ukraine, stepping back from the role when he was… well, elected president of Ukraine. His tenure as president before the Russian invasion was indifferent, having promised a great deal of reform but not always managing to achieve it, but the invasion on 24 February 2022 transformed him and his place in Ukraine’s history.
Zelenskyy decided almost instantly that he would remain in Ukraine to coordinate the country’s defence. Setting aside his personal safety, it was a pivotal and inspired choice, making himself an icon of the resistance against Russia, and his decision to adopt olive-green fatigues was brilliant. It was simplistic, perhaps, but it worked, especially when combined with his public fluency and instinctive feel for an epigram. Nowhere was this shown better than just two days after the invasion; both the United States and Turkey offered to take the president to safety, as he was supposedly a key target for Russian forces. A master of social media, Zelenskyy posted a video of himself outside his official residence, the Bankova, surrounded by the leader of his Servant of the People Party, the head of the Presidential Office, one of his key presidential aides and the prime minister. In a calm and rhythmic delivery, he reassured the people they were here, the president was here, the soldiers were here, “we are all here”.
It was quickly followed up by perhaps the defining remark of his presidency and his national leadership. It was reported by US intelligence officials who had been present: again, Zelenskyy had been offered passage out of Kyiv with his family, given the immediate danger he was in. He was not interested.
“The fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride.”
I defy you to find a Hollywood scriptwriter who could have condensed so much into so little. Of course he would stay in Kyiv at the head of the government, directing the resistance to this widely condemned invasion; to be anywhere else was simply unthinkable; he would be at the forefront of the action; but if other countries wanted to help, well, ammunition would make a difference. If Aaron Sorkin had inserted the line into an episode of The West Wing, his colleagues would have warned him it was a bit too much.
Zelenskyy had continued to conduct a brilliant performance as the public face of the Ukrainian nation. It may be that he is a vastly skilled actor; he may also be someone who has simply risen to the occasion under circumstances he could never have expected. The comparisons with Winston Churchill have tumbled over one another, and they are not wholly outrageous: Zelenskyy exudes a dogged, fatalistic but not gloomy sense of destiny, almost as if he has no control over his actions but they are the inevitable instincts of some greater force. His language is not as ornate or mannered as Churchill’s (or at least does not appear that way in translation), but there is a very similar spirit.
There have been obvious echoes of Churchill’s weary but defiant speech to the House of Commons on 4 June 1940, as he reported on the withdrawal from Dunkirk. He pulled no punches, nor did he try to make the situation seem more positive than it was, but was able to conjure up a sense, as Zelenskyy did in refusing the possibility of escape, that events would follow an inevitable path.
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
Note that Churchill did not promise victory. He went on to say that, if the situation became utterly hopeless in Britain, he expected that delivery would come from “the New World”, but his emphasis was on the struggle and on everyone’s determination to do their utmost. It built upon the prime minister’s dramatic remarks to the full cabinet a week before, when he had rejected the notion of seeking peace with Germany and “That Man” (Hitler). There are varying versions of his remarks to his ministers, but he seems to have to told them:
I am convinced that every one of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.
Not many leaders would talk of “parley” and “this long island story of ours” in normal spoken remarks, but Churchill would. The underlying point was that he was, in a way which approaching literal, telling his ministers that he would not seek to escape in the event of a German invasion, but that he—and let us nor forget that Churchill was 65 years old at this point in the war, with childhood pneumonia, a badly injured shoulder after a fall at school, military service, a spell as a prisoner of war, a very serious road traffic accident and more than 40 years of heavy and sustained drinking and smoking behind him—would accept the fate which awaited him if Britain were overrun. Zelenskyy, in his military fatigues, with an apparent indifference to personal danger, exudes a similarly restrained but powerful image.
The Ukrainian president can now be relied upon for affecting and potent oratory. He gave an address on the morning of Independence Day which emphasised the degree to which the defence of the country relied on every citizen, and, like Churchill, sought no falsely positive notes.
In a big war, there are no small deeds. No unnecessary ones. No unimportant ones. This is true of people, deeds, and words.
Indeed, in manner which is Churchillian, though also recalls some of Charles de Gaulle’s personal and political sense of martyrdom and sacrifice, he has, as often before, used the sacrifice of Ukraine as a talisman of the country’s ultimate victory.
Everyone who survived the occupation is important. Who was holding the Ukrainian flag in the squares. Those who are still under occupation, but keep our flag so that the occupier cannot find it. Those who have waited and will witness the return of Ukraine. Who was wounded, who lost limbs, but did not lose themselves. And most importantly, we all did not lose you. Those who survived captivity. Those who were deprived of their freedom, but not their will. Who did not lose Ukraine in themselves. Those who came back and continue to fight. And those who will return. They will.
Zelenskyy gave another speech at midday in St Sophia Square. (Like Justinian’s great cathedral in Istanbul, St Sophia Square and the cathedral at its edge are not named for a female saint but for the Christian concept of Holy Wisdom, Hagia Sophia (Ἁγία Σοφία) in Greek, Свята Софія in Ukrainian.) This address was heard by a number of visiting foreign leaders, and emphasised Ukrainian unity.
We will cherish our unity. When Russia invaded with a full-scale war, there was not a single day that Ukraine lacked unity. And so Russia had no opportunity to use anything against us, against Ukraine. Everything is only for Ukraine now.
Of course Zelenskyy was not just talking about “unity” in the sense of commonality of purpose among his countrymen. The implications for the territorial unity of Ukraine are impossible to miss. While there is agreement that Russia must be forced to withdraw its military forces at least to pre-February 2022 lines for there to be any conclusion to the conflict, it is very much more difficult to know what further details a settlement would have to have. I wrote in June that it is a fine and admirable principle that Vladimir Putin cannot be seen to have benefited from his military action and sustained breaches of international law; but he has also changed facts on the ground, for example in the Crimea, where it is by no means certain that a popular vote would be in favour of association with Ukraine. In 2001, the census showed that 60 per cent of Crimea’s population consisted of ethnic Russians, while only 24 per cent were ethnically Ukrainian; but seven million people have left Crimea since 2020, mostly Ukrainian refugees, so the peninsula’s Russian identity is likely to be stronger still.
There are no uneventful days for President Zelenskyy. But this Independence Day has been important. The counter-offensive which the Ukrainian Armed Forces launched on 4 June has disappointed some unrealistic observers because it has not been a Hollywood blitzkrieg with overwhelming success coming in days; for some that has translated to the offensive being “bogged down”, lacking in dynamism compared to the swift recapture of Kharkiv last autumn. But this is a long, hard fight, with the Russian defenders dug in to trench systems horribly reminiscent of the First World War, having laid huge minefields with literally millions of mines; these cannot be breached quickly or simply, but only with painstaking effort. There is a useful and sobering article in The Washington Post by General David Petraeus, previously head of US Central Command and director of the CIA, and former West Point professor Frederick Kagan which sets out the realistic parameters of the counter-offensive.
There is a cloud over this. It is still distant, though bigger than a man’s hand. The day before Ukraine’s celebrations, the Republican Party held its first presidential debate for the election in November 2024, at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The leading candidate, former president and indicted fraudster and racketeer Donald Trump did not participate, instead being interviewed one-on-one by right-wing gadfly Tucker Carlson; but eight White House hopefuls did take to the stage, Governor Doug Burgum on North Dakota, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, ex-UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, one-time governor of Arkansas Asa Hutchinson, former vice-president Mike Pence, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.
I won’t attempt a full analysis of the debate here, but the position of the candidates on continuing military and political support for Ukraine is worrying. Trump has already bemoaned the depletion of US military hardware and claimed, in typically confident and evidence-free manner, that he would end the conflict in 24 hours. That, given that Trump has what looks like a very reasonable chance of victory, is concerning. Haley, Pence and Christie have spoken strongly in favour of the West’s support for Zelenskyy. But DeSantis has painted the conflict as a distraction from policy towards China and believes European nations should shoulder more of the burden.
Ramaswamy was very clear. He would negotiate a ceasefire which freezes the status quo and called US policy so far “disastrous”, proposing, disconnectedly, that focus should be on securing the US’s border with Mexico instead.
We are protecting an invasion across somebody else’s border when we should use those same military resources to prevent… the invasion of our own southern border here in the United States of America.
He sneered at the “professional” politicians in a transparent stoking of the flames of the culture wars and airy, unconnected attacks on the liberal conformist views of his opponents.
I find it offensive that we have professional politicians on this stage that will make a pilgrimage to Kyiv to their pope Zelensky without doing the same think for people in Maui or the south side of Chicago.
It is a depressing, intellectually lazy line which answers no hard questions, and both Christie and Haley reacted sharply. The former New Jersey governor dismissed Ramaswamy as “a guy who sounds like Chat GPT”, while Haley showed a flash of real anger. “You have no foreign policy experience, and it show,” she snapped at Ramaswamy. She’s right.
So the fight goes on. I make no apology for saying we are doing absolutely the right thing in supporting Ukraine; the country has been subject to a brutal and unprovoked invasion by a notorious and murderous dictator, and there is substantial evidence of Russian forces committing systematic and repeated war crimes and crimes against humanity. Weary sighs that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is “not a saint” may or may not be justified but they miss the point by nautical miles. The idea that Ukraine and Russia, Zelenskyy and Putin, are in any way moral equivalents is either hopelessly ill-informed or demonstrative of a moral compass not just broken but smashed.
Ukraine did not choose this fight. We know that Putin regards Russia’s “near abroad” as a playground to which he should have exclusive access and in which he should be subject to no interference, supervision or comment. That is not a world which NATO, the EU, the West or any civilised nation can allow to obtain. In a world of baffling, frustrating, multifaceted security challenges, the war in Ukraine seems to me a very easy one to judge. Rishi Sunak is not a Churchillian orator, but the prime minister was right last autumn when he tweeted to Zelenskyy, “Britain knows what it means to fight for freedom. We are with you all the way”.