Fatih Şahin Фатіх Шахін Ukraine, business and international experience — since 2004
National Days & Anniversaries

Day of Unity, 22 January 2005

A unity day greeting a few months after I arrived, when I was still learning what the day was.

Ukrayinski Etnokulturni Rehiony new
Photo: The Shadow Ball · CC BY-SA 4.0

A good Day of Unity to everyone marking it.

I have been in Kyiv only a few months and this is a day I had not heard of before. It commemorates the act of January 1919 joining the Ukrainian People's Republic and the West Ukrainian People's Republic, and it is observed by people joining hands in a chain, sometimes across a bridge, sometimes along a street.

What I notice, as a newcomer, is that nobody explains it to you. You see it happening and you either ask or you work it out. That is generally how things have been introduced to me here, and I have come to think it is a reasonable system.

A good day to you and yours.

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