The following press statement was issued by the Ukrainian World Congress on February 20.
On February 20, 2020, Ukrainians around the world unite in honoring the memory of the peaceful unarmed protesters remembered as the Nebesna Sotnia heroes [Heavenly Hundred] who were brutally massacred in the center of Kyiv while defending the freedom, dignity and European aspirations of the Ukrainian people.
The tragic events that unfolded on Independence Square six years ago on February 18-20 launched a new era in the modern history of independent Ukraine which was, once again, forced to defend its sovereignty, democracy and territorial integrity from a foreign aggressor. Unsuccessful in its attempt to subdue the Ukrainian people, the Russian Federation illegally occupied the Crimean peninsula and the city of Sevastopol, and invaded the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts of eastern Ukraine.