Freedom worth fighting for: Ukraine marks 35 years of independence

Yet the tradition of Ukrainian statehood continued through the era of the Cossack State and the Hetmanate, and in the twentieth century through the Ukrainian People's Republic, which existed for five years before being brutally destroyed by Moscow and forcibly incorporated into the same Russian colonial empire, only under the name of the Soviet Union.

For Ghana, that day is 6 March 1957, the day when the national flag bearing the Black Star was raised over Accra for the first time, and Kwame Nkrumah declared that Africa would no longer ask for freedom but would take it.

These words embody the same truth that Ukraine lives by: the freedom of one nation is incomplete while another nation — or, in fact, more than 200 nations of Russian Federation — is being forcibly held in subjugation.