I live in Ukraine for almost 20 years. And he watched the emergence of modern Ukraine, and how the political nation was born, the Atlantic Council researcher, the publisher of the magazines Business Ukraine and Lviv Today, Peter Dickinson.

When first came here, the Ukrainians were not people with a sense of their own national identity. This was dominated by a kind of post-Soviet fatalism, and most citizens seemed to have remained trapped in the psychological prison of the Soviet system.

Many sought support from Moscow, and Europe was perceived as a different world.

But the generation changed. Thanks to this, an amazing period of national construction, expansion of horizons.

There have been several important events - the Orange Revolution of 2004 and the Revolution of Dignity of 2014. But the process of formation of the political nation did not stop throughout the entire period.

Ukraine is still far from that zone of comfort that exists in the European Union, but the progress achieved is huge. This transformation inspires. And I consider Ukraine - the most interesting country in modern Europe.

Life here is not simple, but boring too. Whenever I travel across Europe, I am amazed at how everything seems dreary there. This view may not be understandable to millions of Ukrainians living in relative poverty and daily struggling to survive.

However, in present-day Ukraine it is almost impossible to know the country with which I first encountered in the 1990s. This is a much more courageous and self-confident country. Uncertainty, once dominant in Ukrainians, gave way to an all-embracing national identity. In many respects this was made possible by the unifying power of resistance in the hybrid war with Russia.

And I am convinced that in the next decades this period will be called the years of the formation of the Ukrainian nation.

Happy Independence Day, Ukraine!.