Ukrainian Quotes

it required a crazy Ukrainian guy. ... "Svoboda" I said. "Condoms only cost fifty slugs. Why would anyone buy this?" He grinned. "It's reusable!"

A disturbing thought popped into my head. "Wait. Have you used this one?" "No, but it wouldn't matter if I had. The cleaning process renders it sterile." "Are you kidd - " I stopped myself and took a breath. Then, as calmly as I could, I said, "It would matter, Svoboda. Maybe not biologically, but psychologically. ~ Andy Weir

Everyone knew Russia's ambitions extended to the Crimea, but a few years earlier some steam was let out of the kettle when the pro-nationalist Ukrainian president was replaced by a pro-Russian successor. The fate of the Black Sea fleet in the port of Sevastopol seemed secure, and Russia went about its business. ~ Tom Clancy

I think everyone remembers how certain Russian bureaucrats used to work against the Ukrainian opposition; I think it is hard to drop old habits. ~ Yulia Tymoshenko

I didn't grow up watching film but as a Ukrainian-American, music and stories and dance are crucial. ~ Vera Farmiga

Ukraine is going through a difficult time. There is nothing extraordinary of the resignation of the Ukrainian government ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections ~ Vladimir Putin

Since I was a big reader, I might be able to accomplish something. I
had no gift. That didn't mean I must be a deprived person. Besides,
why had the Enlightenment poured its seductive light all across the
European continent right into the poor endangered households of
Ukrainian Jews? Probably, my mother thought, so that a child, any
child (even a tone-deaf one), could be given a chance despite genetic
deficiency to become, in my mother's embarrassed hopeful world, a
whole person. ~ Grace Paley

I don't really know what 'American' is. I know what Ukrainian is. We're happy Slavic people. We're not Dostoyevsky Slavic people. There's this sense of 'pick it up, get your hands dirty, make the best of it, celebrate.' ~ Nina Arianda

The crisis inUkraine deepened when pro-Russian supporters, allegedly led and organised by Russian forces, seized police and security buildings in about ten towns and cities across the east of the country. Oleksandr Turchinov, the acting president, ordered an "anti-terrorist operation" to retake the buildings. Thousands of Russian troops are mustered along the Ukrainian border, adding to fears that a crackdown on pro-Russians could trigger a land invasion. ~ Anonymous

I have been a figure skater for so long that when I stopped that competitive day-to-day grind, I didn't know what to do with myself. I don't know how the world works outside of being barked at by a Ukrainian woman and watching my weight. ~ Johnny Weir

I have never allowed anti-Russian rhetoric in Ukrainian policy toward such a strategic partner like Russia. This is the first point. I never went against the interests of the Ukrainian state and the Ukrainian people. ~ Viktor Yanukovych

Nowhere else did repressions, purges, suppressions, and all other kinds of bureaucratic hooliganism in general acquire such horrifying scope as in Ukraine, in the struggle against powerful forces concealed in the Ukrainian masses that desired more freedom and independence. ~ Leon Trotsky

In Soviet writing the demonization of all forms of Ukrainian nationalism has a long tradition, and would make an interesting study in itself. Soviet writers considered almost any criticism of their state - and, from the 1930s, of the Russian Empire - as "fascist" or "counterrevolutionary, ~ Myroslav Shkandrij

I remain convinced that for Stalin to have complete centralized power in his hands, he found it necessary to physically destroy the second-largest Soviet republic, meaning the annihilation of the Ukrainian peasantry, Ukrainian intelligentsia, Ukrainian language, and history as understood by the people; to do away with Ukraine and things Ukrainian as such. The calculation was very simple, very primitive: no people, therefore, no separate country, and thus no problem. Such a policy is Genocide in the classic sense of the word. ~ James Mace

President Putin continues to call for new peace plans as his troops roll through the Ukrainian countryside and he absolutely ignores every agreement that his country has signed in the past and he has signed recently, we, the United States, and Europe as a whole, have to stand with Ukraine at this moment. Ukraine needs our financial assistance and support as it pursues reforms and even in the face, in the face of this military onslaught. ~ Joe Biden

To understand what ended up happening in the 2016 presidential election, you have to understand this: When protests toppled the Ukrainian government, Putin interpreted that as the United States coming into Russia, akin to an act of war; when he launched his counterattack - annexing Crimea, creeping into eastern Ukraine - he weaponized information and showed a willingness to lie, using traditional media like television, and new media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, to spread disinformation into open, Western societies like a virus. Eventually, the Russians would come into America, as they believed we'd gone into Ukraine. They took advantage of the fact that we were worn down by decades of political polarization and the balkanization of our media. America's antibodies to the sickness of Russian disinformation were weak, if they were there at all. ~ Ben Rhodes

I condemn the entry of a Russian so-called humanitarian convoy into Ukrainian territory without the consent of the Ukrainian authorities and without any involvement of the International Committee of the Red Cross. ~ Anders Fogh Rasmussen

The Ukrainian community is tight-knit by nature. ~ Vera Farmiga

In my native valley of the middle Dniester, gentry spoke Polish, peasants - Ukrainian, officials - Russian with the Odessa accent, merchants - Jewish, carpenters and joiners - being Filippians and Old Believers - Russian with the Novogrod accent, the kabanists spoke in their own dialect. Additionally, in the same area there were also villages of Polish-speaking noblemen, and nobles who spoke Ukrainian, Moldovan villages speaking in Romanian; Gypsies speaking in Gypsy, Turks were no longer there, but in Khotyn, on the other side of the Dniester and in Kamieniec, their minarets were still standing...All these shades of nationality and languages were also in a semi-fluid state. Sons of Poles sometimes became Ukrainians, sons of Germans and French - Poles. In Odessa, unusual things happened: the Greeks became Russians, Poles were seen joining Soyuz Russkavo Naroda. Even stranger combinations arose from mixed marriages. 'If a Pole marries a Russian woman,' my father used to say, 'their children are usually Ukrainians or Lithuanians'. ~ Jerzy Stempowski

I wholeheartedly support the aspirations of the Ukrainian people for a democratic, free and just society where the rule of law prevails without corruption or government violence directed against citizens. ~ Marcy Kaptur

Far too often, the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West. But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side's outpost against the other - it should function as a bridge between them. ~ Henry A. Kissinger

Yanukovych has changed everything in Ukrainian jails - real criminals have been released, while representatives of the middle class and politically rebellious free-minded people have filled the prisons. ~ Yulia Tymoshenko

He walked upon 'earth that is as unsteady as the sea,' and found the remnants: photographs of children in Warsaw and Vienna; a bit of Ukrainian embroidery a sack of hair, blonde and black. ~ Timothy Snyder

When Luba was born, her parents named her after the Ukrainian word for love. Lubov. Moya Luba. Lubochka. Every letter Roman had ever written Luba started out with a different variation of her name. ~ Ksenia Rychtycka

We're often silent. We don't yell and we don't complain. We're patient, as always. Because we don't have the words yet. We're afraid to talk about it. We don't know how. It's not an ordinary experience, and the questions it raises are not ordinary. The world has been split in two: there's us, the Chernobylites, and then there's you, the others. Have you noticed? No one here points out that they're Russian or Belarussian or Ukrainian. We all call ourselves Chernobylites. "We're from Chernobyl." "I'm a Chernobylite." As if this is a separate people. A new nation. ~ Svetlana Alexievich

The Ukrainian people should not be coerced. Make no mistake: the US stands together with the Ukrainians aspiring for democracy. ~ John F. Kerry

An old Ukrainian proverb warns, "A tale that begins with a beet will end with the devil." That is a risk we have to take. ~ Tom Robbins

I never complain. I chose the road of fighting with the Ukrainian oligarchy in 1996, and have paid for this with my freedom and that of my husband, my father and my close friends. ~ Yulia Tymoshenko

I was an exchange student for a summer, and most of that summer was in Ukraine. I used to say 'the Ukraine' until I was there, and one of the Ukrainian college students I got to be good friends with, he said, 'Do you say I'm going back to the Texas,' and I said, 'No.' He said, 'We don't say we're going back to the Ukraine, either.' ~ Louie Gohmert

The West appears to have decided for the Ukrainian people what their choice is. The EU does not condemn violent actions in Ukraine which are punishable in the West. ~ Sergey Lavrov

I hope that the responsible figures in the Ukrainian leadership will not hinder soldiers in the Ukrainian army from putting down their weapons, if they aren't capable of taking that decision themselves and giving that order, then (I hope) that they won't prosecute people who want to save their lives and the lives of others. ~ Vladimir Putin

Just forget for a minute that you have spectacles on your nose and autumn in your heart. Stop being tough at your desk and stammering with timidity in the presence of people. Imagine for one second that you raise hell in public and stammer on paper. You're a tiger, a lion, a cat. You spend a night with a Russian woman and leave her satisfied. You're twenty five. If rings had been fastened to the earth and sky, you'd have seized them and pulled the sky down to earth ~ Isaac Babel

I do not want to return to the Ukraine of the 1990s and the time of privatization. Ninety-eight percent of Ukrainian companies obey the laws. ~ Viktor Yushchenko

I grew up in a Ukrainian Catholic-turned-Christian household, and that is my family's faith. ~ Vera Farmiga

Ukraine had quite serious impact on the many Russians. They could see that ordinary people in Ukraine which is a bordering state, very close to Russia, the people of this state are, they didn't want to tolerate anymore the power abuse by Ukrainian officials. ~ Garry Kasparov

I was a Ukrainian folk dancer in my teens, and I toured the country in 1991, shortly before the break-up of the Soviet Union. ~ Vera Farmiga

Berta, like so many Great Russians, thought of Kiev and the surrounding provinces as a Russian outpost: provincial, backward, but Russified to some extent. She had a respect for both the Polish and German influences there, but agreed with the authorities that the Ukrainian culture and language had little to offer. It was banned in the schools and in the government institutions and was thought to be the purlieu of reprobates, lazy slum dwellers, and rustics. Berta was born in Little Russia, a small fact that she never bothered to share with anyone of consequence. She was a Great Russian, as anyone could see by her fierce accomplishments, tasteful dress, and overall refinement. ~ Susan Sherman

What is the purpose of these dolls?"

"To play with, of course."

"Do they look Ukrainian, with their plastic eyes and muddy features blended from every race on earth? ~ Paul Christensen

The Ukrainian opposition should adopt democratic unity as its main principle, and it also must have one leader. ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski

In response to discrimination and persecution in the Holy Roman Empire. They had moved further east into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and, despite the violence directed against them during the 1648 Ukrainian revolt, had continued this eastward pattern of migration and settlement into the eighteenth century. With the partitions of Poland, the areas of densest Jewish settlement came under Russian rule, ~ Niall Ferguson

You remind me of the Siberian hunting spider, which adopts a highly convincing limp in three of its eight legs in order to attract its main prey, the so-called Samaritan squirrel, which takes pity on the spider, and then the spider jumps on it and injects the paralyzing venom, while the squirrel remains bafflingly philosophical about the whole thing. Not to be confused with the Ukrainian hunting spider, which actually has got a limp and is, as such, completely harmless, and a little bit bitter about the whole thing. ~ Bill Bailey

I've done a lot of going back and forth with my own writing, in particular translating my English language stuff into Ukrainian - poetry as well as prose. But I actually hate doing it. It is a thankless, mind-numbing process, additionally unpleasant for me because it reminds me of my ambiguous status of not belonging anywhere. ~ Yuriy Tarnawsky

Dead on time. Not late at all. He was small, white as a sheet, thin as a specter, always moving, even when he was still. The twenty-nine-year-old veteran. He was dressed all in black. He saw Westwood and headed over. He nodded three ways and sat down. He said, "The Valley likes irony, but you got to agree happy hour in a Soviet shrine is the ultimate contradiction in terms. And speaking of the former USSR, my blog alerts tell me a Ukrainian named Merchenko was a mob hit last night. Which is a happy coincidence. But he will be replaced. The market will fill the void. So I'm still not going public. ~ Lee Child

And like all good plans, it required a crazy Ukrainian guy. ~ Andy Weir

Though there is growing division among the Ukrainian military ranks as to loyalty in this revolution, the possibility of violence looms over the entire situation. ~ Bob Schaffer

Ukrainian proverb: The fear of death takes away the joy of living ~ Andy Szpuk

I have this typical Ukrainian face. Even people who know my music don't recognize me most of the time, thank God. ~ Neko Case

When I was a kid, my daily routine was playing make-believe, and I kind of created these stories throughout the day. And when it came time to go to preschool, my English wasn't really so great because my mother wanted me to learn Ukrainian, so she signed me up for these children's theater groups. ~ Nina Arianda

The main thing is that the 'C' is silent, so it kind of starts with a 'Z.' Z-O-O-K-RIE. It's Ukrainian, on my dad's side. ~ Matt Czuchry

Russia has done more than any other country to support the independent Ukrainian state, including for many years subsidising its economy through low energy prices. ~ Sergei Lavrov

In the Western Church to which I belong, priests cannot be married as in the Byzantine, Ukrainian, Russian or Greek Catholic Churches. In those churches, the priests can be married, but the bishops have to be celibate. They are very good priests. ~ Pope Francis

The Ukrainian authorities said Thursday that former President Viktor F. Yanukovych and Russian security agents were involved in plans for elite police units ~ Anonymous

Frankly speaking, we don't see any other way for the steady development of the Ukrainian state apart from as a federation. ~ Sergei Lavrov

I always lived in a multilingual society (Polish-Ukrainian, German-Ukrainian, English-Ukrainian), and was open to outside linguistic influences. I think it was within three years of coming to the US that I started writing in English, although purely for myself, not trying to get it published. Living in America, I was constantly in touch with English, and Ukrainian was for me a private language. ~ Yuriy Tarnawsky

My mother is Ukrainian. She immigrated to the U.S. from Canada as a child. ~ Bob Schaffer

I am a strong Ukrainian girl, that is why I work a lot. ~ Milla Jovovich