The following statement by the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America was released on January 22.
This January 21 marked 30 years since half a million smiling, flag-waving and independence-seeking people joined hands across the 300 miles between Kyiv and Lviv. Organized by Narodnyi Rukh Ukrayiny (the People’s Movement of Ukraine) when the country still suffered under the yoke of Soviet oppression, Ukrainian activists from across this largest country in Europe managed to inspire enough of their countrymen to come out for a peaceful demonstration of national unity and pride to demonstrate the national will “for a united, independent Ukraine.” At one end of the chain, Kyiv residents began their section from St. Sophia’s Square; winding for kilometers out of the city and westward, thousands of youth and elderly, Catholics and Orthodox, ethnic Ukrainians, Jews, Poles and others linked themselves through the streets of Zhytomyr, Rivne, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk.