Every nation remembers the day when it declared itself free. For Ghana, that day is 6 March 1957, the day when the national flag bearing the Black Star was raised over Accra for the first time, and Kwame Nkrumah declared that Africa would no longer ask for freedom but would take it. For Ukraine, that day is 24 August. This year, we celebrate it for the thirty-fifth time; on 24 August 2026, Ukraine will mark 35 years of independence.Thirty-five years is the lifetime of an entire generation. In Ukraine, people have grown up who have never known foreign rule over them and have no intention of ever doing so. But the road to this day was far longer than 35 years.Ukrainian statehood has deep historical roots. More than a thousand years ago, Kyiv was the centre of Rus — a powerful European state with its own political traditions, diplomacy, law, culture and written language. For centuries, attempts were made to dissolve our statehood into foreign empires, to take away our language, rewrite our history and erase our very name. Yet the tradition of Ukrainian statehood continued through the era of the Cossack State and the Hetmanate, and in the twentieth century through the Ukrainian People’s Republic, which existed for five years before being brutally destroyed by Moscow and forcibly incorporated into the same Russian colonial empire, only under the name of the Soviet Union.Sometimes the best way to understand a nation’s history is to look at what it has preserved through the centuries. This year, Ukraine marks the 975th anniversary of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, one of the oldest spiritual and cultural centres of Ukraine and Europe. Founded in 1051, during the era of Kyivan Rus, the Lavra has survived the Mongol invasion, the Lithuanian-Polish period, the Cossack era, the Russian Empire, revolutions, two world wars and Soviet totalitarianism. It has preserved not only its monastic buildings and sacred sites, but also the memory of generations of Ukrainians who shaped our chronicles, education, art, science and spiritual culture. It is precisely for this reason that, just a few months ago, Russia deliberately targeted this our sacred heritage with a drone strike in an attempt to destroy it.In 2026, as the Lavra marks 975 years of history, Ukraine once again reminds the world that its history did not begin 35 years ago. The restoration of independence in 1991 was not the birth of the Ukrainian nation, but the restoration of Ukrainian statehood. And that is why today we speak not only of 35 years of freedom, but of more than a thousand years of historical memory that Ukrainians are defending together with their state. Incidentally, in 1051, the year the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra was founded, Moscow did not exist at all.In 1991, this centuries-old Ukrainian tradition acquired its modern state form. When the Soviet empire collapsed, more than 90 per cent of Ukrainians, in a nationwide referendum, told the world something very simple: we exist, we are a distinct people, and we want to live in our own state. This is how modern Ukraine began.Ghanaians understand this feeling as few others do. Your country was the first in Sub-Saharan Africa to throw off the colonial yoke and showed an entire continent that dignity is not given — it is won. Nkrumah said that Ghana’s independence would have no meaning unless it was linked to the complete liberation of Africa. These words embody the same truth that Ukraine lives by: the freedom of one nation is incomplete while another nation — or, in fact, more than 200 nations of Russian Federation — is being forcibly held in subjugation.Our histories were written on different continents and in different eras, yet they were ultimately about the same thing — the right to determine one’s own destiny. There is an image in Akan culture that resonates deeply in Ukraine — Sankofa, the bird that turns its head backwards in order to reclaim what has been forgotten. “Go back and retrieve what you have lost.” For the past 35 years, Ukraine has been doing precisely this: reclaiming the language in which Ukrainians were once forbidden to speak, the names that were erased from textbooks, and the memory of our poets, scholars and statesmen. A people that knows where it comes from also knows where it is going.Today, Ukraine is defending this freedom at the highest possible cost. Since February 2022, we have been waging a full-scale defensive war against a much larger neighbour that denies Ukrainians the very right to exist. This senseless Russian war has taken thousands of lives, destroyed cities and torn families apart. And yet Ukraine continues to fight. We fight successfully — not because we are stronger than the enemy in numbers, but because a person defending their own home, their language and their children is immeasurably harder to break than an aggressor may imagine. Ghana knows well that independence which a nation is not prepared to defend does not last long.That is why today’s Ukraine is not merely a country defending itself. It is a country that continues to build its future, develop its economy, open new opportunities for international partnership and strengthen its ties with the countries of Africa.This war is not merely a Ukrainian matter. For generations, Ukraine has grown food for people far beyond its borders: our grain, sunflower oil and maize have fed dozens of countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East. When the aggressor blocks our ports, the price of bread rises in markets across entire continents — including African markets, thousands of kilometres away from Ukraine. Therefore, our struggle to keep the Black Sea open is also a struggle for the food security of continents that we have never sought to conquer, but only sought to feed.But it would be unfair to reduce Ukraine to war. We are, above all, a people of culture and traditions. A song that, like the churches of Kyiv, is a thousand years old. Embroidery in which every pattern carries meaning. Literature, cinema, science and IT that command the world’s attention today. Ukrainians are a people who love the land, welcome guests and appreciate a good joke — and in this, I believe, we are closer to Ghanaians than may seem at first glance. We value freedom not for the sake of slogans, but because without freedom there can be neither song nor future.Ghana was among the first countries in the world to recognise independent Ukraine — as early as the spring of 1992. We have not forgotten this. At the end of 2023, Ukraine opened its Embassy in Accra, and it is a great honour for me to have represented my people here for the third year now. We did not come to lecture anyone or drag anyone into foreign conflicts. We came as neighbours and friends: to trade, to learn from one another and to build friendship. For Ukraine, Africa is not an arena for someone else’s rivalry, but a continent of equal partners with whom we want to build a common future.And this presence is already producing tangible results. Since the opening of the Embassy, bilateral trade has shown positive dynamics: while trade between Ukraine and Ghana amounted to approximately USD 34 million in 2023, it rose to almost USD 50 million in 2024 and exceeded USD 70 million in 2025. Behind these figures are not merely statistics, but Ukrainian and Ghanaian companies finding one another, new opportunities for exports and imports, food products, raw materials and joint economic projects. This is precisely the kind of partnership we want to develop further — practical, mutually beneficial and based on respect for each other’s sovereignty — the sovereignty of two free peoples.Ukraine wants its relations with Ghana to go beyond merely protocol-driven diplomatic contacts between two countries that are part of the democratic community of nations. We want to trade more, invest more, and expand cooperation in agriculture, education, culture, technology and other fields. And if the first years of the Embassy’s work are already demonstrating positive momentum, I am convinced that there are many more opportunities ahead.On our national day, I think of the two words on Ghana’s national coat of arms; Freedom and Justice. One could hardly find better words to describe what Ukraine believes in. Thirty-five years ago, we chose freedom. Today, we are proving with our blood that we meant it.So may Ghana’s Black Star and Ukraine’s Tryzub shine over their respective lands, free and unyielding.Slava Ukraini! And long live Ghana!