It rang from speakers on Independence Square in Kyiv and was sung by all who could several times a day: in defiance of the riot police, in celebration of repelled attacks, and in mourning the victims. “Soul and body we’ll lay down, all for our freedom.” This line from the Ukrainian national anthem, a pathos-filled poem in the best traditions of nineteenth-century Romantic nationalism, acquired a very real meaning for Ukrainians in 2014. As Ukraine faces down a brutally belligerent Vladimir Putin, it is the Ukrainian people who are defining what the future of European security and democracy will look like for all. After 2014, Ukrainians asked themselves what sort of country they wished to live in, and then set about building it with a sense of urgency.
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Yet these events also deepened Ukrainian civic identity and accelerated the maturation of Ukraine’s democratic culture in ways that continue today, even as Russian rockets and bombs fall on its cities. The seismic changes that have occurred-and are occurring now-in Ukrainian society beg us to consider, simultaneously, what is changing and will change in the West.įor Ukraine, 2014 was a year of tragedies that changed everything: the killing of protesters during the Maidan Revolution Russia’s illegal occupation of Crimea the start of the Donbas war in the East. We see it as crucial not only that the Ukrainian resistance wins active support abroad, but also that Ukrainians gain recognition as global leaders of the democratic world with a deep understanding of what’s at stake in this pivotal moment. As, respectively, a Ukrainian who has spent most of her life in the UK (Khromeychuk), and an American with Ukrainian ethnicity (Bilocerkowycz), we exist at the intersection of Ukrainian and “Western” cultures and concerns. Against the enormity of the Russian military, few outside Ukraine expected Ukrainians to put up such a fierce fight, or to maintain control of major cities for as long as they have.ĭespite its impossible premise, the meme holds an implicit question for NATO countries and their allies: Do you really know, or remember, what your alliance is for? Because Ukrainians certainly do. These efforts have stunned onlookers the David and Goliath cliché seems actually to apply. While Ukrainians have expressed a strong desire to join the NATO alliance in recent years, this meme flips that expected script, highlighting instead the colossal resistance efforts undertaken by Ukrainians since the invasion began.
![invade us if you are gay meme invade us if you are gay meme](https://img.memecdn.com/nibba-u-gay_c_7200388.jpg)
There are several variations, but it basically goes: Maybe now NATO can apply to join Ukraine. A sardonic joke has been spreading on Ukrainian social media since Russia began its full-scale invasion of the country on February 24.