On Independence Day, Ukraine remembers rather than celebrates

For the second time in as many years, Ukraine will remember rather than celebrate Independence Day today.

With Russia occupying nearly a fifth of the country while fighting continues, officials say they’ll celebrate when the war is over.

Symbols matter. A huge statue which towers over Kyiv represented the Soviet Motherland. The titanium monument, the largest in the country, weighs 560 tonnes, stands 102 metres high and faces Moscow.

In what has been called the final act of de-communisation, the statue was this month rechristened Mother Ukraine. The hammer and sickle were removed from her shield and replaced with the Ukrainian trident.

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Residents of Kyiv are also flocking to see a kilometre-long display of captured Russian hardware on Khreshchatyk Street, the main boulevard which runs through Maidan Square and terminates on the bank of the Dnipro river.

The avenue has become a cemetery of rusting, blown-out tanks, armoured personnel carriers, artillery pieces and howitzers. This monument to Vladimir Putin’s folly conveys a message to Russia: If you come to Kyiv, it will be as broken wreckage.

Defying Russia carries a high price. The field of flags on the lawn at Maidan grows daily, each flag representing a life lost in war. It is a sea of Ukrainian blue and yellow.

Other colours attest to the international pull of the conflict. There’s a plot of red and white Georgian flags, for Georgia has not recovered the territory Russia seized from it in 2008. There’s a patch of blue, apricot and red for fallen Armenian volunteers, and scattered Union Jacks and Stars and Stripes for British and Americans.

Friends and loved ones leave tributes in a bound book that is kept inside a Plexiglas box on the field of flags. Only the hardest heart could not be moved by such inscriptions.

“Dear Tato [daddy]” is written in a childish scrawl to Serhiy Nezachynskyi, an airborne soldier who died in Donetsk. The child’s mother finished the inscription with the words “on duty forever”, which close many of the messages.

Deeply personal words are the most moving; the mother who refers to Roman Kalashchuk of the 4th anti-tank battalion as “my dear little boy”, or the man who tells Vladyslav Radchuk to “rest in peace my little brother. We will avenge you”.

Volodymyr Sklyar was an Mi8 helicopter crew member who “died defending Kyiv against a column of invaders”. He perished two weeks before his 30th birthday and was “the best father, most loving husband and a good man. Glory to the hero”.

A woman signed the book simply as “Your red-headed girl”. She promised to love Volodymyr Seneryk forever. He was, she writes, “My happiness, my heart and my life”.

Today, Ukraine remembers them all and wonders how many more flags must flutter on Maidan Square, how many more inscriptions will be entered in the book of heroes? How many more Independence Days will pass without celebration?