As Tetiana Heienko stood before the seated Russian officer who had summoned her for questioning, she felt something shift inside her.
A member of the town council in her village outside her beloved city of Melitopol in eastern Ukraine, Mrs. Heienko was a figure of modest local authority. So not long after Russian forces occupied the city during the full-scale invasion in 2022, she was summoned for questioning. She understood that, essentially, the officer was asking her to recognize and cooperate with the Russian authorities who were now in charge.
She thought of her garden, where she grew beets for borsch. She thought of the dolls she made and dressed in small swatches of traditional vyshyvanka pattern embroidery. She thought of Melitopol’s annual cherry festival, which had been such a glorious success the previous June.
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After Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, Ukrainians continue to fight a “revolution of dignity” as they assert their own language and history.
At that moment, Mrs. Heienko knew: Everything dear to her was Ukrainian.
The low-level local representative had grown up using Russian in school. It was the language of her public life – as well as most social occasions. But this time she made a choice. She would answer the Russian officer’s questions, but she would do so in Ukrainian.
“The commandant said that if I worked with the new authorities, the local people would come along,” she says, seated in the conference room of an association that assists displaced Melitopolans in Dnipro, a city in central Ukraine she now calls home.
“When I spoke in Ukrainian, it was total shock in the room, but they understood,” she adds. “I was answering these invaders and killers in the language of my home and my heart.”
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Mrs. Heienko’s choice, it turns out, was not unique to her.
Across Ukraine, citizens by the millions have been proclaiming their identity and independence by using their native tongue while learning, writing, working, or socializing.
Indeed, the choice of using the Ukrainian language is just one metric of a change that has swept across the country during a decade of political upheaval and war. But when asked how they and their country have changed during this time, Ukrainians usually cite the widespread and exclusive use of their language before anything else.
Since Russia seized Crimea over a decade ago, Ukrainians have chosen the language of their roots over the language of their occupiers, says Evgeniya Blyznyuk, founder of Gradus Research, a polling organization in Kyiv.
“Broadly speaking, we are in the process of growing up as a nation,” she says. “And just as with children, our use and choice of language is part of that process.”
According to her organization’s annual survey of attitudes, the share of Ukrainians speaking their native tongue instead of Russian jumped from about 40% before Russia’s full-on assault to nearly 7 in 10 today.
“That really very rapid shift in language preference is just one of the very strong indicators we find of how Ukrainians are changing in terms of identity, how they feel about their country, and what values they aspire to for building the future,” Ms. Blyznyuk says. “Ukraine can’t identify with Russia anymore.”
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Ukraine’s “revolution of dignity”
Since 2011, the former Soviet republic and erstwhile domain of Catherine the Great has experienced three major political upheavals – Ukrainians deem them “revolutions.” These include the 2014 Maidan “revolution of dignity” when pro-Western demonstrators forced members of a regime beholden to Moscow to flee.
Ukraine’s surge of nationalism and quest to build a new sense of nationhood is not a unique story. The collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in 15 independent countries of Central and Eastern Europe rediscovering their cultures and national identities.
The results have been mixed, European experts note: from the political and economic success of the Baltic state democracies to the varying degrees of authoritarianism adopted by countries ranging from Hungary to Kyrgyzstan.
Yet while virtually all of these countries have faced some degree of Russian political pressure and covert destabilization campaigns – and some, like Georgia, have lost territory to Russian-backed separatists – only Ukraine has pursued this nation-building journey over a decade of war and a full-scale invasion, now in its fourth year.
As much as anything else, it is the rhetoric of a revanchist Vladimir Putin who insists a Ukraine independent of Mother Russia does not exist. His war that aims to force a rebellious satellite back to the imperial fold has forged a fervent sense of national unity. Even after more than three years of devastating war, there is widespread insistence that, despite Mr. Putin’s terror, there will be no going back.
A patriotism embodied by the soldiers fighting the war is on display across the country. There are flower-laden memorials to local fallen fighters that have sprouted in many small villages – often adjacent to Soviet-style monuments for World War II dead. There is also the flag-adorned memorial that extends over a large swath of Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti, also known as Independence Square.
On a sunny morning in early March, hundreds of residents gather here to express solemn gratitude at a military funeral for a soldier and former protest leader during Ukraine’s 2014 revolution of dignity.
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Fellow soldiers, family, and friends, as well as a host of strangers, file past the open casket of Vasyl Ratushnyi at the sky-blue and onion-domed St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery. Most kneel to pat his hand or kiss his brow. Later, a hearse carries the casket down the hill to the Maidan, where hundreds more gather to pay their respects.
“I came here to honor the soldier who gave his life for my life,” says a woman named Olga, who asked that her last name be withheld, during her lunch break from her job in a nearby hotel. “I didn’t know this boy, but I wish for him to know that I will honor the life of every hero with the life I live for our country.”
Two friends who came in from the Kyiv suburbs say it is important to them to demonstrate their gratitude to the soldiers fighting to keep Ukraine free. “It is thanks to people like this soldier that we have hope to live in a free country and not under the boot of the oppressor,” says Anna Mushynska, whose son Petro was killed in the war in 2024.
Her friend, Iryna Bilan, says that when Russian forces attacked her former hometown of Irpin during the first days of the invasion, she realized Russia would never give up its dream of erasing an independent Ukraine with its own identity and culture.
“It took me back to the day I turned in my written exams for graduating from music school, exams I had completed in Ukrainian,” says the retired music teacher. “The instructor very coldly told me that until I redid the exams in a civilized language, I could not hope to graduate. Remembering that as the enemy invaded my town, I realized that either Russia is defeated, or Ukraine cannot exist.”
For some, Ukraine’s public honoring of its defenders is a sign of a country rediscovering its nationhood.
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“Part of what we see today is a change in who we consider are our heroes,” says Valerii Pekar, a noted Ukrainian futurist and professor at the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School. “Our heroes have become those who resisted during centuries [when Russian power] sought to subdue, occupy, and erase us.”
These include the Cossacks, a warrior people who proclaimed the motto “Live free or die,” and who resisted Russian domination in the 18th century, Mr. Pekar says. It also now includes today’s soldiers who repelled Russia’s 2022 invasion to seize Kyiv and return Ukraine to Moscow’s orbit.
What the world is witnessing today is Ukrainians rediscovering – and asserting – who they are as a nation, Mr. Pekar says. “For us, independence in 1991 was a gift from the collapse of the Soviet Union; it was not anything we had to fight for. It really was not until 2014,” after the Maidan revolution and the Russian occupation of Crimea, “that we realized independence was not free,” he says.
“We can say we as a nation were born in 2014,” he adds. “We realized our independence and identity and Ukrainian culture were things we would have to fight for.”
Echoing Ms. Blyznyuk, Mr. Pekar compares the nation born in 2014 to a child growing up and vigorously discovering and developing its identity. The manifestations of this include music and literature – witness the boom in publishing in the Ukrainian language. There’s also the growth of a vibrant tech community in Kyiv and a world-class space program in Dnipro, which has shifted to defense production.
“The invasion forced a nation that was rediscovering itself to ask, ‘What are our values? What are the core virtues we want our country to live by?’” he says. “One was freedom, yes, but not just freedom from Russia. Suddenly you had an entire nation asking, ‘What do we want freedom for?’”
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A florist who built a drone assembly shop
For Kseniia Kalmus, the answer to the question of freedom’s purpose came within hours of Russia’s invasion. At first frozen with fear, the successful floral designer in Kyiv decided she would replace her fear with action.
“It came to me that I wasn’t helpless, but I was free to do things. I was free to do my part to resist the invaders and help my country,” Ms. Kalmus says. “It seemed to me Russia could never win if Ukrainians were united and acting together to keep our freedom.”
And so the 30-something florist who had always been good with her hands would, before long, find herself building drones for the military’s use. And not just building drones, but organizing national and international fundraising events to purchase drone parts. She coordinated a roster of 35 volunteers, ranging from a 15-year-old tech wiz to a 78-year-old grandparent. Today they deliver hundreds of drones a month in a war in which 70% of military operations are now carried out by such machines.
“I loved my florist shop, but I knew that with my country in danger I needed to do more,” Ms. Kalmus says. “I’m an organizer, and organizing this is my way of fighting,” she says, gesturing toward the workshop where four assemblers are building drones.
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The success of her volunteer drone-assembly organization underscores for Ms. Kalmus how much her country has changed.
“Three years ago most of us weren’t thinking that much about our identity and what ‘Ukraine’ means to us. Most of my friends were still speaking Russian.
“But things are so different now,” she says. “Anyone who stayed in the country,” instead of seeking refuge from the war in another country, “is now super pro-Ukrainian. We are united, but the unity is not just against our enemy,” she says. “Our unity is our strength to build our country.”
Indeed, that unity is why Ms. Kalmus chose to name her drone-assembly organization “Klyn,” the Ukrainian word for the wedge geese make flying together. “Like them, we are stronger when we are depending on each other and flying in unity.”
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Rediscovering a Ukrainian identity
Ukraine’s heightened sense of unity is on display in cities and villages, in restaurants, gas stations, and mom-and-pop shops, with the ubiquitous flying of the Ukrainian flag.
In the gorgeous Black Sea port city of Odesa, the sky-blue and sunflower-yellow banner now graces the granite pedestal where a statue of Catherine the Great – who, according to the Russian version of history, was Odesa’s founder – once stood.
But for some in Odesa, that ever-present symbol of national unity also obscures a lingering division between Ukraine enthusiasts and a slice of the population that remains nostalgic for Mother Russia.
More broadly, some observers of Ukrainian society caution that the country’s war-fueled assertions of unity and national identity do not mean Ukraine’s transition to a modern, Western-oriented European democracy is complete.
“For me, this trend of a rediscovery of our Ukrainian identity and culture is still very fragile,” says Taras Honcharuk, a professor of history at Odesa I.I.Mechnikov National University. “I see the grannies on the bus watching the Russian propaganda channels on their phone,” he says. “We must acknowledge we live in an infiltrated society where Russian propaganda is still very strong.”
Others recognize how Ukraine’s assertion of identity and independence remains a work in progress.
“We still have the old Soviet ways in our laws. We see the Soviet way of thinking in corruption and obscure business and political affairs where others want transparency,” says Ms. Blyznyuk. “Because of the war, the Western part of us is growing, but the Soviet part is quite stubborn.”
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Like Mr. Pekar in Kyiv, Dr. Honcharuk says it was the “shock” of 2014 that set in motion a mental separation from Russia and a growing enthusiasm for independence and identity. Odesa experienced clashes, some of them violent, between pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian camps. Some of the city’s elites shifted allegiance to a Ukraine divorced from Russia – a trend Dr. Honcharuk says accelerated with the 2022 invasion.
Also key in the Odesa historian’s eyes: In 2014, the curriculum for Ukrainian history courses was altered to include sections on the Tatars and their long history and culture in Crimea – a move that mirrored the concurrent elevation of the Cossacks as national heroes.
Still, the unsettled controversy over removal of the Catherine the Great statue tells Dr. Honcharuk that Ukraine, and especially Odesa, has not fully weaned itself from the imperial power.
“I’m a big fan of the Ukrainian flag flying on that pedestal,” he says. “But the fact it’s still a matter of debate tells me we have not yet gained our Ukrainian independence.”
At the Odesa Oblast Academic Drama Theater, director Oleksandr Samusenko expounds on what he admits is a somewhat irreverent position to take: that Russia’s war has not been all darkness and disaster for Ukraine.
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“Of course the war is terrible. It would be cruel to describe the death and destruction as anything good for Ukraine,” he says. “But at the same time, war is also a possibility to bring about changes that otherwise would have taken dozens of years” – or maybe not even then.
In between rehearsals for a reimagining of Nikolai Gogol’s “Marriage,” Mr. Samusenko discusses Ukraine’s complicated history with Russia. Staging a play by Gogol is in itself a statement: To the world, the Ukraine-born 19th-century writer is Russian, but Ukrainians consider him to be Ukrainian.
To Mr. Samusenko’s thinking, Russia’s obsession with subduing an independent Ukraine has accomplished only the contrary. “Our historical and cultural emancipation has been going on for 300 years,” he says, sporting a T-shirt emblazoned with “MADE IN BAKHMUT,” a proud reference to his native eastern Ukrainian city that fell to Russian forces in 2022 after a ferocious battle.
“But now as we fight this war, I think it is the duty of us in the arts to create the works that will amaze people and show them the value of our culture,” he says.
In his version of “Marriage,” Mr. Samusenko says he wanted to evoke Gogol’s roots in Ukraine. The stark set has little more than a well with a long wooden arm for dipping a bucket to collect water – a design he says is emblematic of the Ukrainian countryside.
“I want to show Ukrainians that Gogol got his inspiration from his homeland,” Mr. Samusenko says. “By presenting the play this way,” he adds, “we are showing that there are layers to Gogol that Russia has ignored.”
In his version, the play is no longer a comedy but a drama. Does the bride-to-be who spurns a line of unappealing suitors represent a Ukraine facing difficult choices? Mr. Samusenko says his point is something else.
“What I’m saying with this [reinterpretation] is that in a time of war it is easy to become cynical and cold, losing our human emotions,” he says. “But instead, we need even more to remember who we are and preserve the human part of us.”
In a time of war, a love of country
For Mykola Vlasenko, that essential human part is, simply, love.
The lanky auto repair-shop owner from Odesa says it was “love of country” that motivated him to close up his business a few days after Russia’s February 2022 invasion and join the 18th Battalion of the 35th Marine Brigade.
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“Since the Crimea occupation and everything else that happened in 2014, we had been diving into our roots, learning about our culture we had been told didn’t exist, and discovering a proud Ukraine that is separate from Russia,” he says. “When those people who claimed to be our brothers came to kill us, destroy our villages, and take our lands, I knew within me that I had to join the fight to preserve us.”
Mr. Vlasenko says he realized he was experiencing the same motivation Cossack fighters had defending their lands centuries earlier.
He was inspired to employ his metalworking skills to craft a diminutive heart sculpture in the Mykolaiv region where he and his fellow marines had repelled an advancing enemy.
Blue and yellow on one side, the red and black of Ukrainian resistance on the other, the heart holds in its center a blooming rose – “Ukraine’s national flower,” Mr. Vlasenko says, momentarily forgetting the sunflower – rising from the rich Ukrainian soil.
On a brisk morning in March, the auto-mechanic-turned-soldier drives the three hours from Odesa with his bride of one day, Anna, for newlywed photos at the heart.
The war-damaged village of Murakhivka is quiet, but Mr. Vlasenko says the village council has plans to plant fruit trees and create a proper park on the land it donated to host his sculpture.
“Our enemy wants to claim that there were never Ukrainians living on this land. But I want to say with this sculpture that we have been here for a long time, and the land has made us who we are,” he says.
Noting that “peace” and “world” are the same word in the Ukrainian language, he says, “For me this is both the heart of peace and the heart of the world. It represents love for our country,” he adds, “but also a love for humanity.”
Oleksandr Naselenko assisted in the reporting of this story.
