Two years ago, the people of Ukraine toppled the criminal and tyrannical regime of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych after police opened fire on protestors in Kyiv’s Independence Square. Over 100 people were murdered for making one simple demand of their government — that Ukraine’s citizens be treated with dignity.
Those who perished defending the Ukrainian people’s unalienable right to liberty and justice are known as the Nebesna Sotnya — the Heavenly Hundred — and their sacrifice was marked in Ukraine and throughout the world on February 20, the Day of Commemoration of the Heavenly Hundred.
Since February 2014, many thousands more Ukrainians have died, heroically defending their homeland and their freedom — this time against an external aggressor, the Russian Federation. Today, sovereign Ukrainian territory in the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine is occupied by the Russian armed forces and their proxies. Attacks and shelling are daily facts of life for Ukrainian armed forces in the nation’s east, as are casualties suffered by both Ukraine’s military and its civilian population.
