Two Hundred Fifty

A letter from Kyiv for America's birthday

I am writing this from Ukraine.

You may think I am writing about my country. I thought so too, until I began to recognize your names.

For four years I believed I was writing only about the war. I wrote about the nights here, the windows, the sound that comes before impact. I wrote about the morning that returns after Russia tries to take it away.

Ukraine is where my body is. But after all these comments, all these names, all these small towns I had to search on the map, I found out I have also been writing about you.

You, my friends from the United States of America.

Two hundred fifty years today.

Let me tell you how that number sounds from where I write.

One year before your Declaration of Independence, in 1775, a Russian empress destroyed the Zaporizhzhian Sich, one of the last great free strongholds on my land.

Your founders were preparing to tell the world that people had the right to govern themselves, while my people were being pushed deeper into empire.

We spent those same two hundred fifty years fighting to take our freedom back.

The empire that looked eternal in 1776 no longer exists in the same form. Its habits survived, its cruelty survived, and I hear that in the sky over my city at night.

But the empress and her empire is dust.

Your promise is still breathing.

And I know it is breathing because I have seen it in you. You saw an injustice happening far from home, and you did not treat it as someone else’s problem.

That is why this journal would be nothing without you.

So many times, when my hope was low, you restored my faith in people.

I have never checked how many of you there are. My wife checks for me.

She helps me from another country with everything this journal needs besides the writing. If I saw the real numbers, a voice inside me would ask who am I to be read by so many people, and that voice would stop my hands.

But since today is your birthday, I told her some days ago I had the idea to find 250 reasons to make you feel proud of America. I was sure I had them all.

She said, “Vik, you have more than 40,000 reasons, and that is all you need to know.”

More than 40,000 reasons.

Forty thousand Americans, and in every single state with no exception. Even the ones where I first thought, who there would ever be interested about Ukraine?

There you were.

In every single star of your flag.

Places with troubles of their own, where nobody would blame you for looking only at what is near. Still, you made room for us.

Sometimes I open the maps and “travel” through your country without leaving home in Kyiv. I move across America with a small screen in my hand, until I find the cities you mention in your comments.

I stop where you live.

I imagine the room where you read me. The coffee beside you, the old chair, the dog near the door…

Behind the word America there are actual people, with their own griefs and their own jokes, whose hearts were already full with their own lives, and still they opened a door for Ukraine.

Once, just because I am overly interested in geography and Lyubov has the patience of a saint, I asked her to tell where I am read most strongly, taking into account how many people live in each state.

The answer was Washington.

Not Washington, D.C., but Washington State.

That took my attention because when the world hears Washington, it thinks first of the capital, of that man whose name I will not write here and the repulsion he brings.

But in our journal, look how beautiful, Washington means first of all the state on the far side of the continent, thousands of generous readers by the Pacific.

Both places carry the name of George Washington, the man who was offered the chance to become something like a king and turned away from it.

Second state was Maine, third, Minnesota. Then Vermont and Alaska. In absolute numbers, California was first, unsurprisingly from a population of forty million, just like Ukraine, but with a warmer sun and the Pacific.

That calculation gave me another map of America, a map drawn by care. On that map, Alaska, far from almost everyone, sits close to us.”

I discovered America on that map, in your comments and in your small towns. I discovered a country that could not be reduced to the people speaking the loudest.

The country is the people who keep the promise alive when politics has made everyone tired.

I know many of you are worried about your own country. Since today is your birthday, I need to tell you what I have seen.

I have seen Americans stand with Ukraine when they did not have to. I have seen Americans treat the survival of people thousands of miles away as part of their own moral life.

That is why I respect you.

Your Liberty and our Motherland have never met, but for your birthday, my wife arranged the introduction. Watercolor by Lyubov Kravchuk, on your 250th, with love.

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You, the people of the United States who have stood with us, have my respect. You have the respect of this Ukrainian, and I am absolutely sure you have the respect of many people here who will never know your names, but live under a sky you helped us defend.

A promise can be damaged and still carried forward by ordinary people.

You carried it all the way to Ukraine.

Freedom needs friends, and this country found many of them in you.

Happy Independence Day, America.

Happy 250th.

I love you all.

You are America to me.

—Viktor

🇺🇦🇺🇸

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This journal answers to no one and stays open to everyone. That is its own small independence, and paid subscribers are the guardians who keep it. However you came here, thank you for spending part of your holiday with Ukraine. Slava Ukraini.

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They Told Me To Stop Writing About America