Ukraine Quotes

“Peace is not so much a political mandate as it is a shared state of consciousness that remains elevated and intact only to the degree that those who value it volunteer their existence as living examples of the same... Peace ends with the unraveling of individual hope and the emergence of the will to worship violence as a healer of private and social dis-ease.”
― Aberjhani, The American Poet Who Went Home Again

“Єсть на світі доля,
А хто її знає?
Єсть на світі воля,
А хто її має?
Єсть люде на світі —
Сріблом-злотом сяють,
Здається, панують,
А долі не знають,—
Ні долі, ні волі!
З нудьгою та з горем
Жупан надівають,
А плакати — сором.
Возьміть срібло-злото
Та будьте багаті,
А я візьму сльози —
Лихо виливати;
Затоплю недолю
Дрібними сльозами,
Затопчу неволю
Босими ногами!
Тоді я веселий,
Тоді я багатий,
Як буде серденько
По волі гуляти!”
― Taras Shevchenko, Кобзар

“Як умру, то поховайте
Мене на могилі,
Серед степу широкого,
На Вкраїні милій,
Щоб лани широкополі,
І Дніпро, і кручі
Було видно, було чути,
Як реве ревучий.
Як понесе з України
У синєє море
Кров ворожу... отойді я
І лани, і гори —
Все покину і полину
До самого Бога
Молитися... а до того
Я не знаю Бога.
Поховайте та вставайте,
Кайдани порвіте
І вражою злою кров’ю
Волю окропіте.
І мене в сем’ї великій,
В сем’ї вольній, новій,
Не забудьте пом’янути
Незлим тихим словом.”
― Taras Shevchenko, Кобзар

“Europeans the Poles or Balts coming in here … we brought here knowledge with us and our culture with us, but we assimilated … assimilated is not one way, it’s a two-way street. - Fred Ritzkowski, German”
― Peter Brune, Suffering, Redemption and Triumph: The first wave of post-war Australian immigrants 1945-66

“That there is in this world neither brains, nor goodness, nor good sense, but only brute force. Bloodshed. Starvation. Death. That there was not the slightest hope not even a glimmer of hope, of justice being done. It would never happen. No one would ever do it. The world was just one big Babi Yar. And there two great forces had come up against each other and were striking against each other like hammer and anvil, and the wretched people were in between, with no way out; each individual wanted only to live and not be maltreated, to have something to eat, and yet they howled and screamed and in their fear they were grabbing at each other’s throats, while I, little blob of watery jelly, was sitting in the midst of this dark world. Why? What for? Who had done it all? There was nothing, after all, to hope for! Winter. Night.”
― A. Anatoli (Anatoly Vasilievich Kuznetsov), Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel

“Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, historians have become both more accurate and more honest—fractionally more brave, one might say—about that 'other' cleansing of the regions and peoples that were ground to atoms between the upper and nether millstones of Hitlerism and Stalinism. One of the most objective chroniclers is Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University. In his view, it is still 'Operation Reinhardt,' or the planned destruction of Polish Jewry, that is to be considered as the centerpiece of what we commonly call the Holocaust, in which of the estimated 5.7 million Jewish dead, 'roughly three million were prewar Polish citizens.' We should not at all allow ourselves to forget the millions of non-Jewish citizens of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and other Slav territories who were also massacred. But for me the salient fact remains that anti-Semitism was the regnant, essential, organizing principle of all the other National Socialist race theories. It is thus not to be thought of as just one prejudice among many.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Political calculation and local suffering do not entirely explain the participation in these pogroms. Violence against Jews served to bring the Germans and elements of the local non-Jewish populations closer together. Anger was directed, as the Germans wished, toward the Jews, rather than against collaborators with the Soviet regime as such. People who reacted to the Germans' urging knew that they were pleasing their new masters, whether or not they believed that the Jews were responsible for their own woes. By their actions they were confirming the Nazi worldview. The act of killing Jews as revenge for NKVD executions confirmed the Nazi understanding of the Soviet Union as a Jewish state. Violence against Jews also allowed local Estonians, Latvian, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Poles who had themselves cooperated with the Soviet regime to escape any such taint. The idea that only Jews served communists was convenient not just for the occupiers but for some of the occupied as well.
Yet this psychic nazification would have been much more difficult without the palpable evidence of Soviet atrocities. The pogroms took place where the Soviets had recently arrived and where Soviet power was recently installed, where for the previous months Soviet organs of coercion had organized arrests, executions, and deportations. They were a joint production, a Nazi edition of a Soviet text.

P. 196”
― Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

“Появилась даже такая шутка: Украина — это страна, где люди говорят по-русски, а Россия — это страна, где люди молчат по-русски [141].”
― Timothy Snyder, Украинская история, российская политика, европейское будущее

“For the reporters, the heroes of our time”
― Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

“Communication among citizens depends upon equality. At the same time, equality cannot be achieved without facts.”
― Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

“the problem with accepting things that are contradictory as possibly right is that you cannot possibly be thinking yourself when you do it.”
― Timothy Snyder

“While they were still transporting the grain, there was dust wherever you went. It was like clouds of smoke—over the village, over the fields, over the face of the moon at night. I remember one man going out of his mind. 'We're on fire!' he kept screaming. 'The sky is burning! The earth is burning!' No, it was not the sky—it was life itself that was burning.”
― Vasily Grossman, Forever Flowing

“Skepticism and often cynicism appears the prevalent mood in much of the post-Soviet world, or at least in Russia and Ukraine.”
― Kees Boterbloem, Life in Stalin's Soviet Union

“Nothing is easier than stamping your foot and shouting: ''That's mine!’ It is immeasurably harder to proclaim: ‘You may live as you please.’ We cannot, in the latter end of the twentieth century. live in the imaginary world in which our last, not very bright Emperor came to grief. Surprising though it may be, the prophecy of our Vanguard Doctrine that nationalism would fade has not come true. In the age of the atom and of cybernetics, it has for some reason blossomed afresh. Like it or not, the time is at hand when we must payout on our promissory notes guaranteeing self-determination and independence—pay up of our own accord. and not wait to be burned at the stake, drowned in rivers, or beheaded. We must prove our greatness as a nation not by the vastness of our territory. not by the number of peoples under our tutelage, but by the grandeur of our actions. And by the depth of our tilth in the lands that remain when those who do not wish to live with us are gone.”
― Alexander Solschenizyn, The Gulag Archipelago

“Ми не вважаємо за доцільне заперечувати цінності російської культури. Толстой, Достоєвський і Чехов були великі письменники. Поезія Блока і Пастернака, музика Чайковського й Шостаковича заслужено має світовий розголос. Але не робіть їх нашими рідними.
Ми шануємо вершину російської поезії - Пушкіна рівно в такій же мірі, як вершину портуґальської поезії - Камойнша, а Толстого - як Фльобера або Драйзера. І цінностями російської культури не закривайте нам того факту, що поки росіяни не визнають нашого права на абсолютно самостійне й незалежне від них ні політично, ні господарчо, ні культурно існування - вони наші вороги.”
― George Y. Shevelov, Твердий ґрунт: зариси українського себепізнання

“Some people go shopping. We went to the cemetery. Not because we had nothing better to do — but because it was the most honest route in town.”

— Lana Stasek, Voices Within: Family Chronicles”
― Lana Stasek

“«Blatnoy era il soprannome con cui in paese avevano ribattezzato Gregory, un nome poco felice per uno figo come lui. Vitali non gli assomigliava per nulla, era uno che al posto degli stivali indossava un paio di scarponi da lavoro...»”
― Marianna C. Iliut, Blatnoy

“belief systems are not chosen
by statesmen on the basis of the quality of church frescos; and alphabets
are created by proselytizers, not at the initiative of those who are prose
lytized.”
― Serhii Plokhy, The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus

“The Russians are gradually escalating. They want to create a crisis situation which can be politically exploited to break up NATO. They want to scare the West so badly, that different countries begin to capitulate. If this fails, they will use nuclear weapons. I also suspect they have a maneuver to collapse Ukraine. It may have to do with the Polish part of the Ukrainian border. I do not know what it will be exactly. Hungary might well play a role here. Hungary is with Russia.”
― J.R.Nyquist

“the troops were composed of peasant serfs and poor burghers who were forcibly compelled to enlist. Recruiting frequently degenerated into sheer manhunts which led to bloody clashes. The whole system of military training was of a piece with these acts of cruelty and violence.

‘A soldier should fear his officer more than his enemy.’

Such was the principle laid down by Frederick II.”
― Mark Borisovich Mitin, Marx and Engels on reactionary Prussianism,

“On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale war against Ukraine, the first full-scale kinetic battle in the struggle between Autocracy, Inc., and what might loosely be described as the democratic world. Russia plays a special role in the autocratic network, both as the inventor of the modern marriage of kleptocracy and dictatorship and as the country now most aggressively seeking to upend the status quo. The invasion was planned in that spirit. Putin hoped not only to acquire territory, but also to show the world that the old rules of international behavior no longer hold.”
― Anne Applebaum, Autocracy, Inc.

“Я взявся перетрушувати баул і серед хламу витрусив з нього книжку. Це була збірка вибраних віршів Сєрґєя Єсєніна. Тобто якийсь руский, їдучи в Україну вбивати нас, у дуже стислий перелік найнеобхідніших речей, поряд зі штанами й аптечкою, взяв зі собою книжку.”
― Артур Дронь, Гемінґвей нічого не знає

“Vladimir Putin has done more than anyone on earth to strengthen the NATO alliance.”
― Tony Blinken

“– All strong independent farmers are driven into unbearable conditions. Sooner or later, following the Party’s orders, they will come and eliminate us as a class — within an hour.”
― Володимир Шабля, Камінь. Біографічний роман. Книга друга. Непрості дороги до пекла: Виживання в умовах насильства.

“Bang!”
The explosion thundered right beside him. Danilo’s body was thrown aside like a rag doll, and his mind shut down instantly.
What happened next, Red Army soldier Shablia neither saw nor heard.
The sounds of battle, the shouts of men, machine-gun fire, shell bursts — even the massive shockwave when the bridge and dam were blown up — could no longer reach his consciousness.
Author: Volodymyr Shablia:



Context note: This passage describes the moments of Danylo Shablia's last battle during the chaotic retreat of the Red Army, emphasizing the sudden, impersonal nature of events in World War II.”
― Володимир Шабля, Камінь. Біографічний роман. Книга друга. Непрості дороги до пекла: Виживання в умовах насильства.

“– Independent farmers are arrested and deported somewhere to the Urals or Siberia. I fear we may be the next to be labeled ‘kulaks’.
— Volodymyr Shablia, Stone. Book Two


Context note: During the forced collectivization in the USSR, millions of peasants were forcibly deported to remote regions such as Siberia and the Urals as part of state repression against on wealthy peasants (nicknamed "kulaks" by the Soviet authorities).”
― Володимир Шабля, Камень. Биографический роман. Книга вторая. Непростые дороги в ад: Выживание в условиях насилия

“That’s how we’ve ended up,” Ivan said with a bitter smile. “We work, as in the proverb: Enough trading, father — there’s no change left to give.
‘Why did they suddenly increase the grain procurement plan?’ Vasyl protested.
‘Everything seems the same — but it isn’t,’ Danylo explained. ‘The status of our land has changed, and so has the status of the collective farmers. What grew last year is now taxed differently. Even the poor peasants who joined the collective are no longer considered poor — and the taxes rise accordingly.’
‘Clever,’ Ivan muttered angrily. ‘They’ve laid out their accounting traps well.’
— Volodymyr Shablia, Stone. Book Two


Context note: In Soviet collective farms, taxes and grain quotas were often increased not because of real agricultural growth, but due to bureaucratic reclassification. Accounting became a tool of pressure that made normal farming impossible.”
― Володимир Шабля, Камінь. Біографічний роман. Книга друга. Непрості дороги до пекла: Виживання в умовах насильства.

“1920… Chaos.
A chaos brewed from fear, lawlessness, constant changes of power, civil war, and disease.
The Red Commissars with their grain requisitions.
The White Guards with arrogant imperial plunder.
Makhno’s forces with anarchist expropriations and the division of everything and everyone.
The gangs of Hryhoriev, Marusia, and countless others…
Each with its own rules.
Yet all of them take and kill, rape and rob.
In Tomakivka, only one institution functioned reliably – the hospital.
It was needed by every warring authority, every general and ataman:
the wounded had to be treated, the sick healed,
and the able-bodied fed and given shelter.
— Volodymyr Shablia, Stone. Book One


Context note: Set in Ukraine during the Civil War (1917–1921), at the time of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, when multiple armed forces – Red, White, anarchist, and local warlord groups — fought for control, leaving civilians trapped in a landscape of violence, lawlessness, and disease.”
― Володимир Шабля

“The hospital’s long-time cook, Iryna, mechanically peeled potatoes as usual — breakfast had to be prepared for the patients.
Work was work, and she was now the only breadwinner in her family.
Yet today her thoughts were entirely at home. There, her pregnant daughter Maria had been struck down by typhus and had lain alone in critical condition for a week. To make matters worse, no one was with her.
Normally, Iryna would visit her sick daughter during the day. But today the hospital was in emergency mode — another convoy of wounded from the civil war had arrived. A mother’s heart was tearing itself toward her child… though what could she really do?
Wiping her hands on a towel, Iryna approached the small icon depicting the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus. She knelt, folded her hands to her chest, fixed her gaze on the immaculate face of the Mother of God — and began to pray.
— Volodymyr Shablia, Stone. Book One
Context note:
Set during the chaos of the Ukrainian Civil War and a typhus epidemic, this scene shows the quiet suffering of civilians. While the hospital is overwhelmed with wounded, a mother torn between duty and fear turns to faith — highlighting the human cost of war beyond the battlefield.”
― Володимир Шабля, Камінь. Біографічний роман. Книга перша. Перші кроки до світла та назад: Дитинство та занурення в ГУЛАГ.

“Soon after the birth, Maria was shown her son. He was no longer crying.
The baby was tiny, frail, his skin wrinkled — yet his bright, restless eyes darted stubbornly in every direction, as if he were trying to take in this vast, unfamiliar, and beautiful world as quickly as possible.
“You did well, Maria! You have a son! You did well!” Irina kissed her daughter’s hand joyfully. “Everything will be all right now.”
Seeing her child, Maria felt relief wash over her. She longed to take him into her arms, to press him to her chest — but the baby was taken away.
After the necessary procedures, the midwife quietly pulled Irina aside.
“Breastfeeding is dangerous,” she whispered. “The baby could contract typhus. But he is premature, weak — and if he does not receive colostrum now, I fear he will not survive. The previous woman gave birth a week ago and has no colostrum left. I believe we must take the risk: newborns contract infection from sick mothers in only about a third of cases.”
Irina looked at her grandson lying in her arms. He jerked his tiny hands and feet at random — then smiled clumsily.
“God’s will be done,” she said firmly. “A child must drink his mother’s milk.”
When the alcohol-sterilized breast was offered to the baby, it turned out his mouth was too small to take the nipple. Fortunately, the other breast was smaller — and the boy latched on with determined urgency.
Holding the flesh of her flesh to her chest, feeling her son’s gentle sucking, Maria experienced a moment of pure euphoria. The terrible illness receded, making way for the overwhelming joy of motherhood.
Neither Maria nor the newborn knew of the danger of infection. They were simply following the ancient law of nature.
And Irina spent the rest of the day in prayer, asking God to spare two souls — her daughter and her grandson.
— Volodymyr Shablia, Stone. Book One


Context note:
During the Ukrainian Civil War of 1920, amid epidemics, hunger, and collapsing authority, a premature child is born into a world where survival depends on instinct, faith, and impossible choices. This moment captures motherhood and mercy standing against historical catastrophe.”
― Володимир Шабля, Камінь. Біографічний роман. Книга перша. Перші кроки до світла та назад: Дитинство та занурення в ГУЛАГ.