Patrick Cox: I don’t know about you, but for me, the very first words of Ukrainian I heard were these.
A cappella version of “Oi u luzi chervona kalyna” (“Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow”)
Patrick Cox: It was a video posted on YouTube in late February, a few days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The singer is Andriy Khlyvnyuk, lead singer of a Ukrainian band called BoomBox. He’s wearing a Yankees baseball hat, military fatigues, an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder. Behind him is the golden cupola of Kyiv’s Saint Sofia Cathedral. You may have seen this video or its many remixes. Tens of millions have.