AMBASSADOR TAYLOR CELEBRATES THE FOURTH OF JULY

Dobry Den,

On this Fourth of July, I'm very glad to be able to address the People of Ukraine on this podcast coming to you from the website of the United States Embassy in Kyiv.

On the Fourth of July, we celebrate our independence. This is actually our 231st celebration of our independence from Great Britain, dating back to 1776. Dating back to 1776 means that we've got 231 years of experience. This experience has been exciting, and sometimes we've done things right sometimes and we've done things wrong sometimes.

It took us, for example, easily fifteen years to get our constitution right. The first constitution that we had in the United States was a very loose one. It did not have central powers that allowed the central government to really govern, and as a consequence it failed. We had to start over in 1789 with a new constitution. I say this because Ukrainians are going through their discussion of their constitution now.

We have had a period of time, 231 years, where we've had changes in government. Every time we have moved from one president to another, it's been peaceful. We haven't had kings. We haven't had queens. We haven't had czars. We haven't had violence with the change from one president to another. And that I think is also a good history.

We have had violence. We have had violence, as you know, a civil war that was a horrible one in our history. Nonetheless, we came out of that. We came out of that stronger. We have now gotten ourselves on track, again, as a very old and respected democracy.

Independence is important. Democracy is a way to maintain that independence. We are very proud of our democracy and we are very pleased to be here in Ukraine as Ukraine develops its democracy. We hope that we can work with Ukrainians as they work on their democracy.

One of the ways that we've tried to help is to provide small grants to non-governmental organizations in Ukraine as they have developed democratic principles, and they have developed democratic institutions, democratic traditions. The non-governmental organizations, press, Internet sites that we have helped to sponsor with these small grants, they have added to the tradition of democracy here in Ukraine. We hope these will continue.

Independence is a good thing. We've celebrated it for a long time. We hope to help Ukrainians move into their history with their democratic traditions and we hope that they will have a long history of independence as well.

Thank you very much.