Grief, pride and a vow to win: Ukraine marks a year of war
KYIV, Ukraine — Church bells tolled, weeping mourners embraced and blue-and-yellow national flags fluttered Friday as Ukraine marked the first anniversary of a Russian invasion that triggered a cataclysmic war but also galvanized a powerful sense of common purpose among the country’s people.
“We clearly understood that for each tomorrow, you need to fight,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told his compatriots in a video address commemorating the Feb. 24, 2022, invasion that triggered Europe’s largest land battle since World War II. “And we fought.”
Across the country, Ukrainians looked back on the year with a mixture of sorrow and pride.
“No one was expecting Ukraine would still be standing today,” said Oleksandr Azarov, a 39-year-old emergency services worker from the northern city of Chernihiv. “We are grieving, all of us, but we
