Between March 1917 and June 1920, power in Kyiv changed hands fourteen times. Each new regime raised its flag above the city, issued decrees, promised salvation—and fled before the next army arrived. Symon Petliura entered Kyiv on a white horse; a Polish patrol came to take the city on a regular tram.
Amid the collapse of the Russian Empire, Ukraine was given a brief and extraordinary chance to become an independent state. It was led by historians, writers, journalists, and soldiers: Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Volodymyr Vynnychenko, Symon Petliura, and Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky. They argued, trusted foreign allies, made treaties with yesterday’s enemies, and failed to build the army and the state their country desperately needed.
Germany wanted Ukrainian bread. The Bolsheviks wanted Ukraine itself. The White Army wanted “one and indivisible Russia.” Poland wanted Ukrainian land. The people wanted peace and soil—and were offered the simplest and deadliest of lies.
Behind the declarations and changing flags stand the boys sent to die at Kruty, the victims of executions and pogroms, looted homes, abandoned governments, and a bewildered Kyiv learning to survive one new regime after another.
Ukraine 100 Years Ago is neither a lecture nor a solemn historical chronicle. Told with clarity, bitter humor, and open anger, it is the story of how a nation won its independence for a moment, lost it through division, ambition, naivety, and foreign betrayal—and began a struggle that has never truly ended.