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

Day of Ukrainian Statehood 2022

A new date in the calendar, marking a very old thing: the long line of Ukrainian statehood running back to Kyivan rus.

A church bell tower
Photo: Ivonna Nowicka · CC BY-SA 4.0

A good Day of Ukrainian Statehood.

This is a new observance marking something very old. The date refers back to Kyivan rus and the baptism of Volodymyr, and to the long and interrupted line of Ukrainian state formation that runs through it.

I am an engineer by training and my instinct with history is to ask what is documented. What is documented here is a state centred on this city more than a thousand years ago, with law, coinage, diplomacy and cathedrals, several of which are still standing about twenty minutes from where I write this.

Every European nation constructs a story about its own antiquity. This one has the advantage of being able to point at the buildings.

A good day to everyone marking it.

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