Address by the President on Ukraine’s Independence Day

Dear Ukrainians!

Today is Ukraine’s Independence Day. The 35th anniversary. A national holiday with a flavor profoundly changed by the war. 1,643 days of full-scale war.

Right now, things are really very difficult for all of us. But there is a force holding us firmly by the hand – and it’s actually not invisible at all. It is the strength of our mutual circle: support for one another, freedom from doubt about the person beside us, faith in all Ukrainians. And as long as the enemy does not break this circle of ours, Ukraine will not fall, will achieve its peace, and will succeed.

In all his plans for Ukraine, Putin got the most important thing wrong. The enemy counted our resources, our stockpiles, our equipment, but failed to take into account what was key. People. The greatest achievement of Ukraine’s independence. The people who make up our state. People who take responsibility. People who do not want Russia here and who fight tooth and nail for peace and independence.

The Russians thought we were the younger brother, but life has proved that we are strangers to them. Every trait of our character is foreign to them. Everything that makes Ukrainians Ukrainians.

They do not know what it means when hundreds of thousands of volunteers go to defend what they hold dear. And someone who was a teacher, an entrepreneur, a farmer becomes a warrior. For me, it is always an honor to receive from such people a part of their greatness, their strength. These – and the hundreds of thousands of other patches on our defenders’ shoulders – carry a light that God sees in the heavens and that makes Him stand with us.

Hundreds of thousands of names, lives, and characters are holding the front and holding our independence.

I thank all our warriors who, all these years, all these days, and right now, at this very moment, are fighting so that Ukraine lives.

You defended our capital, liberated the Kyiv region, the Kharkiv region, and the Kherson region. You are not giving up our Donbas. You will not give up Ukraine. You are the best defenders. You are the best army in Europe. Period.

And that is the plain truth, because our military stands not only on doctrines and standards, but also has a heart that needs no additional order to be brave.

When you race in a pickup truck, saving our wounded soldiers who are already being hunted by Russian drones. And in less than a minute, you pull out warriors – not even from your own unit, but certainly your own kin. Ukrainian kin. This deed of Ukraine’s Hero Vladyslav Polskyi swept across the country. We are already defeating Russia with all of this – with our will, technology, resilience, and dignity. With the pure human feelings that still live within us despite the war.

We have preserved tenderness, although we could have turned into monsters. We have preserved the habit of helping first, without asking whether this is your problem. We have preserved the human being within ourselves. When the whole neighborhood welcomes someone home from captivity. When an elderly couple takes a photo among the cherry blossoms. When an Odesa minibus driver sings to his passengers to lift their spirits after a night of strikes. When an entire village restores a stork’s nest. When a brother-in-arms with a prosthetic leg is carried the final stretch to Hoverla – because this is what it means to never leave your own behind. When a son who has only just learned to walk embraces his wounded father, a warrior.

All these and hundreds more snapshots of our lives are living proof: we have not grown hard-hearted as a country. We fight as a country, we laugh and cry as a country, and we love as a country. And this makes us a hundred times stronger than Russia.

And a hundred times stronger than all their tanks on parades is this girl of ours. Taisiia Onofriichuk. She was five when Ukraine last won a world gold medal. Thirteen years later, it happened again. Despite all their attacks, despite all their destruction, all their evil, we find within ourselves this ability – to win and to do the impossible.

In a great war, there are no small things. And every such achievement by our people can, in fact, set off thousands of chain reactions across the country.

Someone, inspired by these emotions, with renewed energy, will return to their laptop or their machine – so that our strength will be more precise, faster, more painful for the enemy. So that we can do more. Our defense industry today is truly a giant, forging independence 24/7. And we have to do more. Tens of thousands of ground robotic systems are carrying out extremely dangerous missions at the front and have already saved thousands of soldiers. But we have to do more. Our naval drones are in action: the enemy had a fleet, and it is becoming scrap. But we have to sink more. Our mid-range strikes are cutting their logistics. Our long-range capabilities are cutting their profits. Thousands of our deep strikes have already been seen by Moscow, Tuapse, Tula, Ryazan, Olenya, Omsk, and dozens more places where our Ukrainian justice has already reached. Russia must see more of this justice. Flamingos should not be a rare species, but birds arriving en masse. They must “winter” in Russia.

I thank everyone who has worked over these four years and is working right now at production facilities and is building up our defense industry. This is our pride. But it does not blind us. We see what Putin is doing and what he wants. A solution to his ballistic terror must be found, and this gamble of his must not pay off.

Ukraine will do it. Ukraine has already solved problems that initially seemed impossible to overcome. Remember the day when 40 “shaheds” first flew toward Kyiv. Some shouted that it was the end, while others searched for and found solutions. Now we shoot down over 90% of “shaheds.” Russia has switched to jet-powered ones. We are already shooting those down too, but we have to do it on a mass scale. The same must happen with the Banderols, and the same must happen with their ballistic missiles. Ukraine is doing everything for this. And it will succeed. Because it has already proved more than once that our stubborn resolve is simply beyond their caliber.

Behind these words are millions of Ukrainians. Our best qualities, skills, experience, our ability to improve, grow stronger, and keep moving forward despite everything.

I am proud of our people who find the strength within themselves every morning to get up. Do what you can. Be where you must.

And someone today is rushing to the guys at the front, because war does not know weekends. Someone right now is defeating death in an operating room. Someone else woke up before dawn today, so that our streets are clean, so that the harvest in our fields is brought in, so that we are ready for the school year, because in just a week, thousands of first-graders across Ukraine will hear the first school bell. And this is Ukraine, where even in the fifth year of a full-scale war, life prevails.

Ukraine remains itself. Ukraine is proud of its own. Of its Kharkiv. Truly unconquered. Of its Dnipro. Truly unstoppable, working and saving lives without pause. Of Zaporizhzhia and its steel character. Of Odesa, with its optimism in its people, who are capable of lighting up the sun and overcoming Russian darkness. We are proud of all our cities: of our Chernihiv, Sumy, Kryvyi Rih, Kramatorsk, Nikopol, of every city and village that is geographically close to the front but, in terms of values, very far from Russia. Thank you – our gates. Thank you for standing firm.

Dear people!

I am grateful to you for your confidence in Ukraine, in our military, and in our state. The strength of that faith is a significant achievement of our time – having no doubts about Ukraine, not when it is easy or fashionable, but because it cannot be otherwise.

I very much want us to preserve this. To have confidence – in our state, in our army, in ourselves, in everyone who is beside us, whom you can rely on and who relies on you.

On this day, Independence Day, it is worth thinking about this. Realizing four things. What we have already achieved, where we are now, what lies ahead, and what we have to do.

Putin is stuck in the past. He still looks at an old-style Ukraine – one that will stay silent, swallow it, endure it. That Ukraine exists nowhere except in his “little folders of reports.” Our state has long been different. Not an observer, but a player. Not a victim, but a fighter.

We will not let them seize the initiative, deceive Europe and the entire world into thinking that they simply need to give up the Donbas, and everything will be over soon. We have no illusions. We don't trust them. We are not going to save the Kremlin half a million soldiers. Russia keeps pushing back the dates when they will “definitely, any day now, take the entire Donetsk region.” It will keep pushing those dates back. Ukraine is different, and it does not give away what is its own.

Russia does not want peace. It wants mobilization. Well, we take this in with a cool head. We act. We have to strengthen our military, have everything needed to hold our defense, our warriors must be supplied and equipped with everything so that the replenishment of the enemy army can be turned into fertilizer for our soil.

Putin hopes that we are tired. But we know that he is mortal. He never understood us. Now he will not have time to. You wanted to take all our Ukraine, all our land; instead, you lost your oil refineries, your fleet, your profits, your entire generation that you sent into the meat grinder. You wanted us erased from the map; now you are absent from the international agenda of the future civilization. For 27 years, the head of Russia has talked about greatness, while Russia is standing in lines for gasoline.

We have to remain united and push them until they give in. Ukraine, Europe, America, the world. I am glad that the United States has lost all illusions about whether Russia truly wants to end this war. I believe that America will lose all its contradictions and phobias about Russia. The Russians must be brought to the negotiating table. There finally must be sanctions that will make them howl. Ukraine must be given everything that will force them to end the war. And this is possible.

About everything that protects Ukraine today, we were first told, “Impossible,” then, “Very difficult,” and then, “Not so fast.” And then America made a decision. It worked. And America’s strength was absolute.

We are not asking you to fight for us. Give Ukraine everything it needs to stop this war, to stop it faster than Putin can start the next one. To prevent that, we must act together. Europe must be Europe. United, ambitious, brave. China should no longer remain silent. When someone puts on a sailor’s uniform and cap and, badly pronouncing some words, talks about a nuclear strike, China must respond, must cool their ardor. China must prove its ambition to be one of the world’s leaders, not only economically and technologically, but also as a civilization – making it clear that no dictators have the right to threaten the planet with their old warheads.

Ukraine and the world – together – can stop this. This alley of our gratitude proves that the planet is full of brave people. And there is still plenty of room for new acts of courage and new gratitude from Ukraine.

We remember everyone who stood with us in the most difficult times. We believe in everyone who continues to stand with us. This friendship is also, today, an expression of the best human qualities that exist in Ukraine and among its partners. And that is why nothing will shake the coalition Ukraine has built around itself. There are more people on Ukraine’s side. More countries on the side of truth. And Ukraine has countless friends like these, and there is no alley in the world that could hold the names of everyone who has a Ukrainian heart. Everyone who stands with Ukraine right now, with our military, with our people. And all of this is not charity, not mercy, but an achievement of our state. Of Ukraine that no longer asks, but offers, motivates, unites. That wants peace. Very much. And that will achieve it.

Dear Ukrainians!

Thirty-five years ago, Ukraine was reborn. It restored its independence. It was not given to us nor was it lent to us – it was fought for. People risked their lives for it. People gave their lives for it. So that all the deeds of previous generations could become this day. August 24, 1991. Then, Ukraine’s time had come. But no one promised that it would be easy or carefree.

On February 24, 2022, history tested our independence. It asked us a question: Who are we? A crowd or a people? Weaklings or warriors? A buffer between civilization and orcs or a state? I thank the millions of Ukrainians who gave and continue to give their answer in favor of Ukraine, in favor of independence.

We have fought tooth and nail for it, yes, for 1,643 days. Courageously. Resiliently. Stubbornly. And we meet this day with special emotions. A spectrum of completely different feelings accumulated over the years of war. Ukrainians are proud of themselves – but without pomp. They rejoice modestly. They congratulate one another, knowing the price of independence. Our eyes are full of tears and hope at the same time. We are hurting, but we are learning to be stronger than all their evil. We are all tired, but we do not complain for long. Ukraine absolutely wants peace, but it is not ready to simply surrender.

Over these 35 years, we have heard many predictions about ourselves. And almost all of them proved wrong. They said the state would not make it, that we would not withstand the upheavals. And on February 24, they said we would hold out for only a matter of days. But we have held out all this time – all this time of the war for independence.

The fight for it – the fight for the freedom of all previous generations – was so desperate that some people around the world called us “crazy people.” Ukrainians, however, always did everything so that one day we could say: “My God! We’re free people!”

Thirty-five years ago, that day came. And the day when there will be peace in Ukraine will also come. We are all human. We all want to live through times that are not historic, but simply quiet, peaceful, safe times. In a peaceful Ukraine. A Ukraine that made it. That stood its ground. That preserved itself and its independence. That is what we are fighting for. That is what we stand for. With faith in one another, in our defense forces, in our state.

Take care of yourselves and those who are beside you, preserve the memory of all the heroes who gave their lives so that our Ukraine could live. Protect our state, protect our independent Ukraine!

Happy Independence Day, Ukraine!

Glory to Ukraine