If anyone had any doubt that Ukraine has its own national identity, the early days of the Russian invasion should have eliminated it.
There’s been the stiff resistance of Ukraine’s fighters, the former president giving interviews in the streets of Kyiv in battle gear, the ordinary men and women insulting and defying Russian soldiers, and above all, the comedian-turned-president, the now legendary Volodymyr Zelensky, refusing to leave his capital as Russian forces bear down on the city seeking to capture or kill him.
This is all so compelling because there is something inherently stirring about a people defending their homeland from a would-be imperial overlord.
The fight to save Ukraine represents a righteous nationalism. The Ukrainians aren’t defending democracy per se or freedom in the sense of abstract rights — although Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a threat to both — but their land and birthright. They are struggling for national self-determination, and even national survival.
Even in a globalized world, even when patriotism is not nearly as strong a force as it once was, even among Eurocrats who want to subsume Europe’s nations in an EU superstate, Ukraine’s struggle still strikes a profound chord.
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