The Rushnyk of Unity, Rushnyk of Victory

Andrii Yatsenko brings together students, parents and teachers across Kherson region to embroider what becomes the world's longest rushnyk — 735 metres, a Ukraine Record. Cadets of the Kherson State Maritime Academy unfurl it across the Antonivskyi Bridge, symbolically joining both banks of the Dnipro.

Retreating Russian forces loot the Kherson Regional Museum where the original rushnyk was kept for safekeeping. Museum staff manage to save it — the artifact that once joined two riverbanks survives occupation intact, in free Kherson.

Ten years on, Yatsenko proposes a new shared symbol — this time for Ukrainians scattered by the full-scale invasion, not just one region. On October 1, the project launches at the 800-year-old Oleviste Church in Tallinn, with Ukraine's and the US's ambassadors to Estonia in attendance. Rushnyky start arriving from Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Portugal, Poland, Norway, Cyprus, France, Spain and the Netherlands.

The rushnyk comes home first: Chernivtsi, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Dnipro, Poltava. Ukrainians who stayed and Ukrainians displaced abroad meet, symbolically, around one shared cloth — before the rushnyk returns to Europe for a full touring year: Portugal, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Cyprus, Austria, the Netherlands, Norway, Scotland.

At Tallinn's Town Hall Square, The Book of World Records officially certifies the Rushnyk Yednosti – Rushnyk Peremohy as a European Record: the largest collaborative embroidered cultural project made by needleworkers and organizations from multiple European countries. 103 individual rushnyky, 89 organizations, 160 metres 50 centimetres — and three more panels added days later.

The rushnyk keeps growing on the road: Scotland, then Ireland, where the diaspora community adds three more panels on a windswept coastal gathering — living proof this is not a finished museum piece but an artifact that keeps being written.