Daily Inspiration Quote by Viktor Yushchenko

“Revered and respected” is a carefully double-barreled demand: it’s not just about how Ukraine is treated abroad, but about how Ukrainians see their own state. Coming from Viktor Yushchenko, a leader forged in the Orange Revolution era, the line carries the anxious realism of a country trying to become a durable political idea, not merely a piece of contested geography.

The wording “once again” quietly insists on historical continuity. Ukraine isn’t asking to be invented; it’s asking to be restored. That phrasing pushes back against a long-running imperial narrative that treats Ukraine as a periphery with borrowed sovereignty. It also flatters domestic audiences with a memory of legitimacy: you are heirs to something older than the latest crisis.

The most revealing move is the triangulation: “its citizens” placed alongside “the East and the West.” Yushchenko is signaling that Ukraine’s core struggle is internal cohesion as much as external alignment. Respect from Moscow or Brussels is meaningless if the state is viewed at home as corrupt, captured, or provisional. The quote implicitly critiques the post-Soviet hangover: weak institutions, oligarchic influence, and public cynicism that make independence feel performative.

By naming both “East and the West,” he also rejects the idea that Ukraine must be a buffer or a prize. The subtext is a plea for full subjecthood: a nation that sets terms, earns confidence, and demands recognition on equal footing. It’s nation-building rhetoric with stakes, aimed at turning dignity into policy and identity into endurance.