Today, Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of its Constitution. This occasion is significant as regards national self-identification. It commemorates Ukraine’s freely chosen confirmation three decades ago as a democratic state that had liberated itself from Soviet totalitarian colonial rule and aligned itself with the European family of democratic states. The Constitution’s principles have been tested by Russian aggression. The principles enshrined on June 28, 1996 – sovereignty, territorial integrity, democracy, and the right to choose its own path – form the substance of what Ukraine defends. Russia’s full-scale invasion launched in February 2022 was an assault on Ukraine’s constitutional existence as an independent, democratic state oriented toward Europe.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. A Constitution that did not come easily The fact that it took almost five years after independence was achieved to adopt this crucial document indicates how complex the situation was in the early 1990s. It attests to the continuing struggle in those years between progressive political forces seeking to remove the vestiges of Ukraine’s Soviet past and the still-powerful residual elements from the communist era, who wanted to apply the brakes and maintain their influence. And, there was the problem, then as now, with a powerful Russian neighbor unreconciled to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of independent states – particularly Ukraine – next door. So the issue of security and finding a modus vivendi on which to base peaceful coexistence with Russia while looking westward, on the one hand, and bolstering Ukraine’s democracy internally, on the other, were both major and interconnected challenges that had to be addressed.