Leopolitans came together to perform the Ukrainian anthem

This country will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the national anthem’s first public performance and the 200th birth anniversary of its composer, Fr. Mykhailo Verbytsky, both this year. On this occasion, people came together of their own accord in the heart of Lviv, Rynok Square, to perform the nation’s principal song. Those present included the city’s leadership, local universities’ rectors, heads of ethnic culture societies, school kids, university students, middle-aged and elderly people.

Lviv mayor Andrii Sadovy addressed this huge community choir. “These days, we are all living out the anthem’s words ‘souls and bodies we will lay down, all for our freedom,’” the mayor noted, in particular. “The enemy is a master of deceit, it worked to corrupt our government and ruin our army. It did not take one thing into account, I mean the importance of freedom, that great notion. No one has ever succeeded, and no one will succeed in breaking our will to be free. On deeper reading of the anthem’s words, it becomes clear that it is actually our roadmap. I would like to see all of us give a really deep thought to every word and every line of it, and then ‘our persistence and our sincere toils will be rewarded,’ to quote the anthem again. We must cooperate to build the country one would want to live in.”

Boys and girls held giant music sheets, and then raised them above their heads in the shape of a trident, Ukraine’s emblem. Rynok Square saw a giant national flag of Ukraine unfurled as well.