Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski has received on Monday the 2022 Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States, awarded by the U.S. National Constitution Center.
In this way, the organization has honored the Ukrainian president for his «heroic defense of freedom against Russian tyranny», after the president appeared in a video recorded during the ceremony accepting the award.
Senators Chris Coons and Rob Portman visited Kiev last week and presented the medal in person to Zelenski. The Constitution Center announced the award in August and said the Ukrainian leader was selected «for his heroic defense of freedom from Russian tyranny» during the war in Ukraine.
During the ceremony, also in a video message projected at the ceremony, former President George W. Bush called Zelenski «the Winston Churchill of our time».
Jeffrey Rosen, president of the National Constitution Center, read a letter from U.S. President Joe Biden, who called Zelenski «a rare patriot».
«When Russia launched its brutal assault on Ukraine eight months ago, President Zelenski stood tall and declared, ‘The president is here.’ His words lifted the Ukrainian people and echoed around the world. Today, he continues to fearlessly lead his country, defending Ukraine’s sovereignty and fighting to uphold the basic values that unite us all,» Biden’s missive wields.
Zelenski’s medal acceptance speech was presented by Iryna Mazur, Honorary Consul of Ukraine in Philadelphia, who has detailed to the attendees that «if you are here today, as guests or as patrons, it means that Zelenski has touched your heart. He, along with the entire Ukrainian nation, has become a symbol of unity, strength and uncompromising desire for independence, for the basic right to be free and to choose your own future.»
In his acceptance speech, which Rosen said had been recorded just hours earlier, Zelenski said that millions of people are fighting and working to protect Ukraine, and that the Medal of Freedom honors them.
«And now we see what democracies are capable of when they act united (…) Every potential aggressor in the world sees the help that the United States and the free world is providing us, and all the sanctions imposed against Russia see and believe that it is better not to start a war against freedom at all,» Zelensky said.
The Medal of Freedom, created in 1988, has been awarded to international leaders and other celebrated figures who have worked to protect freedom around the world.
Past recipients include Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Muhammad Ali, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel and Viktor Yushchenko, the former president of Ukraine who was notoriously disfigured by poisoning suspected to have been caused by the Russians. In addition, Biden himself was awarded that medal in 2017 by then-President Barack Obama.
The medal is endowed with $100,000 (a similar figure in euros), which Zelenski confessed he would donate to a new Ukrainian Veterans Fund.
