Glory to the Heroes

“Glory to the Heroes!” is the official and traditional response-greeting that forms an integral part of the national salute “Glory to Ukraine! — Glory to the Heroes!”.

Today, this slogan expresses the deepest respect, gratitude, and honor for Ukrainian warriors, male and female defenders, as well as all those who gave their lives for the freedom, independence, and future of Ukraine. It symbolizes the unity of the nation, the memory of the heroes’ feats, and the unbreakable spirit of the Ukrainian people.

“Hero” is a word that cannot be spoken indifferently, without emotion, without pain, and without tears.

Because behind this word stands no bronze on a pedestal, nor a line in a textbook.

Behind it stands a human being.

The very person who only yesterday lived an ordinary life. Loved. Laughed. Planned. Called their mother. Hugged their child. Dreamed of returning home.

And then went to defend Ukraine.

Yet sometimes, it is not that person who comes home.

It is a photograph that returns.

A flag.

A medal.

A silence that settles forever at the family table.

Ukraine knows the price of freedom not from books. It knows it by name.

It knows it through the bodies of those who gave their lives.

It knows it through the blood of those who returned without a leg, without an arm, with a shattered body, with pain invisible through their clothes.

It knows it through the eyes of those who will never see the dawn the way they did before the war.

And it knows it through the hearts of mothers, wives, fathers, and children who learn every day to live with an empty place beside them.

This is a devastating price. Yet it is precisely because of it that the Ukrainian flag still flies above us.

We often talk about heroism as something exceptional. As if a hero is a person of a different breed.

No.

A hero is an ordinary person who, in the most terrifying moment, makes an extraordinary choice.

To stay.

Not to retreat.

To shield another.

To return to a place every instinct tells them to run from.

To press forward when every cell screams: “Live!”

Ukrainian heroism is not a love for death.

It is a love for life.

For the lives of their children.

For their native land.

For the language in which a mother spoke her first words.

For the home they yearn to return to.

For the freedom that no one has the right to tear away from us.

Our warriors do not give their lives for an abstract map.

They give them so that Ukraine remains free.

For a child’s right to wake up in their own country.

For the right to speak Ukrainian.

For the right to love without permission from a foreign state.

For the right to be masters on our own land.

And that is why we cannot simply bow our heads before them.

Before them, we must live a life that ensures their sacrifice was not in vain.

Not to betray.

Not to forget.

Not to trade freedom for comfort.

Not to allow lies to label a heroic feat a “waste of life.”

We will remember those who did not return.

We will honor those who came back from the war with severe injuries.

We will support those who relearn every day how to walk, work, laugh, and build a future.

Because life after the front line is also a front line.

And every veteran who rises from bed, puts on a prosthesis, returns to work, hugs a child, and starts over—continues their fight.

We will not allow them to be remembered only on holidays.

We will not allow a Hero to become a photograph on a board that people walk past every day.

Heroes are not the past. Heroes are our responsibility to the future.

And when we say:

GLORY TO THE HEROES!

—these are not just words.

It is a promise.

To remember.

To honor.

To support.

Not to betray.

And to protect the Ukraine for which they gave the most precious thing they had—their very lives.

Let everyone who looks at the Ukrainian flag remember:

this flag carries a price.

The price of tears.

The price of blood.

The price of lost limbs.

The price of health.

The price of lives.

And that is precisely why we have no right to be indifferent.

Glory to those who hold Ukraine.

Glory to those who returned.

Glory to those who will never return.

Glory to the Heroes who allow us to call Ukraine—ours.

Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Heroes!