“Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!” That is the slogan the Ukrainian military officially began using at the country’s Independence Day parade on August 24, replacing the Soviet-era “Wish you health, comrade!”
The phrase dates back to World War I, when military units from the short-lived Ukrainian People’s Republic were fighting alongside German and Austro-Hungarian soldiers against Russia. However it was in the 1930s when it really took hold, becoming a rallying cry for the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), explained Oleksandr Zaitsev, a historian from the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv.
