Happy Independence Day of Ukraine!

On this day, one can get an especially acute feeling of how much the word “independence” means to us.

We are tired. After years of war, each of us has learned how to live and work with it. With air alerts, casualties, news we hate to read. With attacks on cities and villages, energy facilities, roads, bridges, enterprises, and homes – all the things a normal human life consists of.

They destroy our infrastructure – we restore it.
Electricity is cut – our energy workers bring it back.
A road or bridge is ruined – people seek solutions how to recover the connection.
Communities keep working. Engineers keep designing. Builders keep constructing.

And the country is standing strong.

What is it that keeps us strong?

Perhaps, a simple feeling of home.

Our towns. Our streets. Our schools. Our universities. Our factories. Our rivers and roads. The places where our children our growing, where our parents have lived, and where we want to live.

And when it is about your home, you cannot stand aside.

That is why reconstruction to us means more than just a set of projects, cost estimates, and square meters. We are defining the way Ukraine is going to be after this war, what our communities will be like, how reliable the infrastructure will be, whether the economy will be able to develop, whether Ukrainians will want to come back home, work here, have children, and link their future with Ukraine.

For us – engineers, designers, builders, consultants – everyone working with the infrastructure, there is a special responsibility here.

Because we are going to leave behind what we are building today.

I would love our children to use these roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, water pipelines for many years to come without even thinking about the price they once cost. So that it would be just a normal, modern European country for them where it is comfortable to live.

For that, it is worth doing our job well.

I am grateful to all our colleagues in Ukraine who continue to work. Thank you to municipalities, professional community, and Ukrainian businesses. Thank you to our foreign friends and partners who are standing with Ukraine and helping us survive and recover.

And I am deeply grateful to those who are making it all possible – our servicemen.

It is them who are holding the heaviest structure of all, our Ukraine. They are the force without which we wouldn’t have our work, our plans, and our very future that we are building today.

Our task is to do our best to make the country that they are giving their lives for worth this struggle.

To make it strong, modern, and free.

To make the country we will want to pass to our children.

For this is our home.

Happy Independence Day!