19-year-old Daria Kozyreva`s Speech in the Court

Yesterday, this 19-year-old girl gave a speech in court in St. Petersburg that was incredibly courageous in Putin’s Russia.

Student Darya Kozyreva was tried for “discrediting” the army (Part 1 of Article 280.3 of the Criminal Code) for a piece of paper with poems by Taras Shevchenko, which she pasted onto a monument to the Ukrainian poet on the anniversary of the war. Here is her final statement.

“If Taras Grigorievich had accidentally ended up in our time, I would probably be expected to say that he would have been quietly amazed. No, he would not have been surprised at all. He would have seen the picture too familiarly. Muscovy is climbing again.

Of course, the war did not start in 2022, and even in the narrow sense, 2014 should be considered the starting point. In 2014, the same Russians started it, guilty of every drop of spilled blood. In the broad sense, the war has been going on not just since 2014, but for hundreds of years.

An amazing feature of Russian history. No matter what regime is in power here, it’s as if religion doesn’t allow this regime to just up and leave Ukraine alone. Tsars and communists were no different from each other, no matter what clothes they tried to put on.

It would seem that after so many centuries, they would have understood: well, leave us alone, leave us alone. Yes, Moscow won a lot, but it never saw the final victory. And it never will. The Ukrainian people will not give it to them. They have had enough.

But the lovers of occupation still do not understand this. They are not the smartest, no matter how much they would like to be. No one gave them a simple word regarding the past and future of Ukraine. They do not understand that Ukrainians do not need any older brother; they do not need anyone, especially not the triune Russian people.

Ukraine is a free country, a free nation, and it will decide its own destiny. If someone broadcasts the narratives of the invader, Ukrainians will hate them. And Ukrainian nationalists have nothing to do with this. They brought it on themselves.

If someone tries to interfere with Ukraine, they will be beaten. And, perhaps, painfully. I sincerely wish that Russians would simply remember these truisms. Ukraine, once again, is a free nation. It will decide for itself which way to go. It will decide for itself who to consider a friend and brother. Who to consider a fierce enemy. It will decide for itself how to treat its history. And even more so, it will decide for itself what language to speak.

It seems like I am saying obvious things, but they are not obvious. Putin cannot get it into his head that Ukraine is a sovereign nation. However, there are many things his head cannot grasp. Like human rights, democratic principles.

But even those who seem to be against Putin’s government do not always understand this. They do not always understand that Ukraine, having paid with blood for its sovereignty, will decide for itself what to do. Of course, I would like to believe that with the advent of democracy, sooner or later, this attitude will change. I would like to believe in such a wonderful future, where Russia has renounced any kind of empire, predatory and thirsty for blood, or secret, hidden in people’s thoughts. God willing, just God willing.

I already mentioned in the debate that it would look very ridiculous to mention shackles in the context of the current situation in Ukraine. Well, Ukrainians will not allow themselves to be shackled anymore. They have not allowed it now. But in Taras’s time, shackles, alas, were a cruel reality. That is why you will not find in his work militant calls to beat the Muscovites. It’s not the right time, not the right hopes.

His patriotic work is a lament. A lament for the bitter lot of Ukraine. A lament for the forgotten glory of the Zaporozhian Cossacks. A lament for the mistakes and defeats because of which Ukraine lost its will.

He believed, of course, that one day the former glory would return, that the ghosts of the great hetmans would rise from the centuries, that Ukraine would finally throw off the enemy chains. He could not know exactly when this would happen. He could not know that in half a century the Ukrainian People’s Republic would appear on the map, that the same Ukrainian peasants, once enslaved, disenfranchised, speechless, would finally raise the national flag, that they would take up arms and go beat the Bolsheviks and volunteers led by Petliura.

Unfortunately, the Bolsheviks won. And unfortunately, not only for the Ukrainians, but for many nations. Ukraine found itself in the hands of a fierce executioner for another 70 years.

“I am forced to interrupt you again, this is not a history lesson,” Judge Ovrakh wearily intervened again.

Now in the present day. Today, the shackles have long been thrown off. No one will put them on Ukraine again. The people have been shedding blood for their freedom for centuries. They will never give up this freedom to anyone again. Ukrainians remember, remember very well, how their ancestors once fought.

I want to ask only one thing. Does our eastern neighbour remember? Fortunately, there are no more communists, especially tsars, but the imperial traditions seem to have remained.

Yes, as I have already said, Putin seems to have trouble getting his head around Ukrainian sovereignty. In principle, he would be quite satisfied with a docile, speechless Little Russia, preferably a Little Russian province in general, which has no will of its own, which obeys his every word, which speaks a foreign language, gradually forgetting its own, native one. Somewhere, there was definitely a miscalculation.

Well, it was hard for Putin to believe that Little Russia would never shine for him again. Ukrainians simply will not let their country be turned into it. Putin tried, tried hard. He annexed Crimea in 2014, he started the war in Donbas for all the same purposes.

In ’22, he decided that it was time to finish what he had started. It was a good plan. Blitzkrieg, Kiev in three days. It is not surprising that three years were not enough, and three decades would not have been enough.

The enemy was quickly driven out of the outskirts of Kyiv, then forced to flee from Kharkov, and driven out of Kherson. Not only did the occupiers not reach the capital, they still do not completely control the ORDLO. Part of the Ukrainian land, yes, is still captured. Perhaps it will be captured for a long time. It is sad to admit, but alas.

However, Moscow failed to conquer Ukraine. The heroic Ukrainian people stood up to defend their homeland. And at the cost of many, many sacrifices, they defended their country. The national flag flutters over Kyiv and will flutter forever. Even when thrown back from the capital, then, at the beginning of 2022, the occupier was simply left with nothing.

I dream, of course, that Ukraine would get back every inch of its land, including Donbas and Crimea. I believe that one day my dream will come true. Someday, history will judge everything fairly. But Ukraine has won anyway. It has already won. That’s all.

Published in Mediazona