This year, Ukrainian Statehood Day was dedicated to the 8th annual historical and cultural festival “Wild Field. The Road to Europe,” initiated by the regional administration's Department of Culture and Tourism with the support of the Donetsk Regional State Administration since 2016.
The deputy head of the regional state administration, Oleksandr Shevchenko, addressed the participants with a welcoming speech, noting that holding the event on Ukrainian Statehood Day is symbolic. The historical and cultural festival, founded in 2016, presented the history of the country in different periods of its development – from the Scythian era to the events of the modern Russian-Ukrainian war. And while the format of the event has been temporarily changed, its idea remains unchanged, which is a powerful force against the manipulation of historical facts in the context of the Russian Federation's information war against Ukraine.
This year, the scope and format of the festival were expanded to include environmental, nature conservation, educational, and cultural institutions from 10 regions of Ukraine, among which representatives from Donetsk played a key role.
The main part of the festival was a scientific conference, which served as a platform for discussing current issues of ecology, nature use, and environmental protection, bringing together representatives of the scientific community from many regions of Ukraine. Scientists from the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, doctors of historical sciences, museum researchers, local historians, historians, and students presented their work, experience, discoveries, and problems faced by the historical, local history, and environmental sectors during the war at the Steppe University location.
The conference will result in the publication of a collection of scientific works, “Wild Field: Nature, History, and Modernity of the Ukrainian Steppe” (third edition), and a collection of amateur literary works (second edition), which will make a significant contribution to preserving the cultural and natural memory of the steppe Ukraine—its uniqueness and beauty.
In addition to scientific reports, the festival featured the works of participants in other locations: “Fine Arts,” “Photography,” “Decorative and Applied Arts,” and “Applied Arts.” A total of nearly 130 masters and artists took part in the festival, and more than 180 works were submitted for consideration.
The festival “Wild Field. The Road to Europe” has become an important symbol of our historical memory and national identity, and for the enemy, it is a marker of the resilience of Ukrainian culture. Today, more than ever, we understand that history is not just the past, it is what hurts in our present and calls us to action in the future. We have become witnesses and participants in a new chapter — the struggle for the right to be ourselves, for the right to belong to the European family, for values that have been despised for decades, and now we stand for them — with dignity, with weapons, with words. We will stand firm! We will preserve! We will win!