As Trinidad and To­ba­go cel­e­brat­ed its 60th an­niver­sary on Wednes­day, there was one on­look­er who tru­ly un­der­stood the grav­i­ty of the mo­ment.

That per­son was no oth­er than the am­bas­sador of Ukraine to T&T Sergiy Kys­lyt­sya, the per­ma­nent rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Ukraine to the Unit­ed Na­tions.

“This coun­try is blessed not on­ly by God due to the ge­o­graph­ic lo­ca­tion and nat­ur­al re­sources, but al­so that you en­joy rel­a­tive peace for many decades and that you have a rea­son­ably well-ed­u­cat­ed pop­u­la­tion, and there are many won­der­ful things that un­for­tu­nate­ly, your neigh­bours may not en­joy,” Kys­lyt­sya said.

Kys­lyt­sya is cur­rent­ly in T&T af­ter be­ing in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in this coun­try’s Di­a­mond Ju­bilee cel­e­bra­tions.

He spoke to Guardian Me­dia at the of­fice of the del­e­ga­tion of the Eu­ro­pean Union to T&T, which is lo­cat­ed at the RGM Build­ing, Queen’s Park East, Port-of-Spain.

On Au­gust 24, ex­act­ly one week be­fore T&T’s in­de­pen­dence, Ukraine ob­served its 31st In­de­pen­dence Day. How­ev­er, be­cause of the con­flict with Rus­sia over the last six months there were sub­dued and som­bre cel­e­bra­tion in their cap­i­tal Kyiv.

Kys­lyt­sya laud­ed this coun­try’s fire­works dis­play, say­ing while he has wit­nessed many of such cel­e­bra­tions, in­clud­ing the 4th of Ju­ly in New York, he thought ours was amaz­ing.

“We should not un­der­es­ti­mate the im­por­tance of every cit­i­zen of an in­de­pen­dent na­tion, in this case Trinidad and To­ba­go, be­ing proud. And we should not re­al­ly shy away from cel­e­bra­tions and es­pe­cial­ly in very chal­leng­ing times, eco­nom­i­cal­ly and oth­er rea­sons,” Kys­lyt­sya said.

“Let us not for­get that at least around the same time last year, no­body be­lieved peo­ple would be able to gath­er en masse to ob­serve fire­works. So, it is very im­por­tant to pre­serve not on­ly the eco­nom­ic strength but al­so the men­tal health of the na­tion.”

Kys­lyt­sya de­scribed the cur­rent in­va­sion of his coun­try as Russ­sia try­ing to colonise them, but says he be­lieves Ukraine will over­come it.

“Ukraine’s in­de­pen­dence is im­por­tant be­cause it is the cel­e­bra­tion of our free­dom and lib­er­ty and you know you cel­e­brate free­dom and lib­er­ty as well, but what we have to­day is an as­sault of neo-colo­nial­ism and the de­sire of Putin to re­store the So­vi­et em­pire,” Kys­lyt­sya said.

“The Ukrain­ian na­tion has made its fi­nal choice and you can see every day the lev­el of de­ter­mi­na­tion of the na­tion to pre­serve our in­de­pen­dence. We do not want to be colonised again.”

Kys­lyt­sya said the on­go­ing in­va­sion is a re­sult of the Crimea con­flict which be­gan eight years ago.

“Eighty-five per cent of Ukraini­ans to­day, de­spite all the de­struc­tion and in spite of los­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers, they still be­lieve that ter­ri­to­r­i­al con­ces­sions should not be on the ta­ble,” he said.

Kys­lyt­sya said even if the war is over to­mor­row, it will take gen­er­a­tions to let peo­ple be­lieve that Rus­sia is not a threat any­more.

“I do see an end (to the war). Mil­i­tary de­feat of Rus­sia in Ukraine is im­mi­nent,” he said.

Kys­lyt­sya is a ca­reer Ukrain­ian diplo­mat who has served now as the Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Ukraine to the Unit­ed Na­tions since Feb­ru­ary 2020 and the non-res­i­dent Am­bas­sador of Ukraine to the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go since Oc­to­ber 2021.

When Kys­lyt­sya came to T&T last year, there were dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions be­tween the two coun­tries with re­spect to food se­cu­ri­ty and digi­ti­sa­tion.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, those plans were de­railed but I am sure that they are just put on hold and as soon as the war is over we will come back to those dis­cus­sions,” he said.

Pri­or to his cur­rent ap­point­ment, Kys­lyt­sya served as a Deputy For­eign Min­is­ter of Ukraine in 2014-2020 and Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al for In­ter­na­tion­al Or­ga­ni­za­tions of the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs of Ukraine in 2006-2014.

Kys­lyt­sya al­so served on dif­fer­ent diplo­mat­ic po­si­tions in Ukraine’s Em­bassies to the Unit­ed States, Bel­gium, the Nether­lands and Lux­em­burg, as well as in the Mis­sion of Ukraine to NA­TO.