Peter Zalmayev, Mykola Murskyj: Ukraine – knocking at the gates of Europe

On July 20, the assassination of a well-respected journalist in Kyiv shook post-revolutionary Ukraine in a way that even the war a few hundred miles away could not. Killed by a car bomb in the city center, Pavel Sheremet lived the liberal-democratic ideals that inspired the 2014 EuroMaidan. The Revolution had dramatically demonstrated that Ukrainians were adopting not only a new national identity, but a new kind of identity altogether: rather than defining themselves as non-Russian, non-Polish, non-Soviet, those who came out onto the Maidan exchanged a negative identity for a positive one - Europeans who believe in liberty, equality, and the rule of law.