Eighty-eight years is almost a whole human life. It is an age of wisdom, wrinkled hands, and memories that smell of wormwood, the hot July steppe, and iron.

Today, we address our Luhansk region not just as an administrative unit on the map, but as our native home, which is currently going through its most difficult test.

Luhansk region is the land of the first ray of sunshine in Ukraine. The place where our common day begins. Today, this dawn is obscured by smoke, but it has not gone out.

We remember her differently:

Luhansk with its cozy squares, tram tracks, and the special buzz of the evening center.

Waste heaps. Our "man-made mountains" that silently guard the peace of mining towns, crashing into the endless sky.

Slobozhansky steppes. Where the wind walks in the tall grass, and the air is so thick with the aromas of thyme that you can drink it.

Bilovodsk horses and Starobilsk streets, where history breathes in every stone, and the land remembers the Cossack will.

For thousands of us, Luhansk Region now lives only in photos on our smartphones, in keys to apartments that may no longer have doors, and in dreams of returning home by "diesel" or an old familiar highway.

This is nostalgia for those evenings when the sun set behind the waste heap, painting everything around in an incredible orange color. For the sound of the mine siren, which was the pulse of our land. For the smell of linden on the streets of Lysychansk and the pine forest around Kreminna.

We don't just remember the names of cities - we remember the feeling of home.

Luhansk Region today is not just a territory. It is people. It is warriors who fight for every meter of their native black soil, it is doctors, teachers, and volunteers who are scattered around the world, but keep "their own" in their hearts.

We believe that eighty-eight is just a number on the path to revival. The time will come, and we will gather again in Luhansk region. We will rebuild, plant new forests in place of the burned ones, and once again meet the first dawn of the country free.

Happy birthday, our invincible Eastern outpost. You are us, and we are you. To victory. To home.