**BERLIN—There are moments in the life of a nation **when history ceases to be something written in books and becomes something carried by individual men. Moments when treaties, speeches and political theories suddenly matter less than whether somebody is willing to stand on a road, shoulder a rifle and refuse to move.
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Thomas Babington Macaulay gave that moment its enduring words in * Lays of Ancient Rome*, when Horatius prepares to defend the bridge against an army:
“Then out spake brave Horatius, the Captain of the Gate: to every man upon this earth, death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better, than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his gods?”
It is difficult to look at the photograph of the Ukrainian soldier known as “Borets” riding a bicycle through the cold streets in the first days of the Russian invasion without thinking of those lines.
His equipment looked almost absurd beside the scale of the force advancing into his country. A rifle. Ammunition. Anti-tank weapons.
Whatever he could carry.
Then he rode toward the Russians.
Today we know what happened outside Kyiv. We know that the Russian columns were stopped, that Hostomel did not become the bridgehead Moscow had hoped for, that the Ukrainian government remained in the capital and that Russian troops eventually withdrew from northern Ukraine. A few stood against many. That’s what matters.
It was not inevitable in February 2022.
When Russian forces crossed Ukraine’s borders from several directions, nobody standing in their path could know how the story would end. Russian armored columns were moving toward Kyiv. Airborne troops were fighting for Hostomel. Missiles were falling across the country. Western governments prepared for the possibility that the Ukrainian capital might fall. Foreign embassies had evacuated. Military analysts debated whether Ukraine could continue organized resistance for more than days or weeks.
And somewhere inside that chaos rode a man on a bicycle into the dawn, amidst abandoned cars, like in a Walking Dead Episode.
His equipment looked almost absurd beside the scale of the force advancing into his country. A rifle. Ammunition. Anti-tank weapons. Whatever he could carry.
Then he rode toward the Russians.
