Ukraine had not won the war—or not yet. More trials lay ahead. But it was what you might call a proven state. It was one of history’s survivors: of two world wars, Stalin’s famines, the Great Terror, and the Chornobyl explosion. Then nearly a decade of subversion and occupation by Russia: first in the east, and then with a full-blown invasion. Ukraine had not yet perished, as the words of the national anthem put it. The hope lived on: of a free people living happily in their land.
