Organizers explain the idea and history behind the celebration of Ukraine’s Unity Day when human chains in Ukrainian cities will mark the country’s historic event of uniting into one state.
Tenth anniversary event on Ukraine’s Unity Day will be held on January 22 at the Paton bridge in Kyiv. The event was presented by Vladyslav Korolyov, coordinator of volunteers of the event, at a press-briefing at Ukraine Crisis Media Center. “Our idea is to connect the banks of Dnipro with a human chain and thus symbolically unite Ukraine,” he explained. The event will start at 10 am, 150 volunteers and 10 civil society organizations are involved in preparing it.
The event’s main aim is to draw attention to the historical event – the fact of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) and the Western Ukrainian National Republic united into one state. “It is not only about the chain on the bridge itself but also people’s knowledge of the fact. There is information on our web site on the history of the event, there is a map where people can see how Ukrainians in Kyiv and beyond mark the Unity Day – the first historical unity case that brought eastern and western Ukraine together into a united and inseparable state,” noted Yevhen Kvaskov, member of the Cossack group “Spas”.
Vadym Vasylchuk, event coordinator, explained that the organizers intended stepping away from the Soviet-style celebration. “Our aim is to promote the unity idea to the maximum. We saw that the Unity Day is marked in a Soviet way when people holding flags of various political parties come to see public performance on stage. It is artificial, and one does not get a feeling of the country’s unity. We demonstrated that it can be held in a bright, contemporary and interesting way,” he said.
Odesa, Uzhhorod, Bakhmut, Kramatorsk, Zhytomyr, Warsaw and Lublin will join the event. Organizers promise to stage a thematic performance.
