You're reading: Ukraine’s national anthem gets rock version

A rock version of Ukraine's national anthem popped up on YouTube on March 24. The video featuring musician and Kharkiv EuroMaidan activist Nikita Rubchenko got some 300,000 views in just the first three days.

A new version of the “Ukraine Has Not Yet Died” (“Shche ne vmerla Ukrayina”), Ukraine’s national anthem, includes guitar sound and drum beats. 

“It was made to support the country and Ukrainian citizens,” Rubchenko wrote on his Facebook page.

The video can be watched here.

Ukrainian national anthem was first presented at the Ukraine Theatre in Lviv in 1864. The famous lyrics were written in 1862 by Kyivan ethnographer Pavlo Chubynsky as a poem. A year later western Ukrainian composer Mykhailo Verbytsky wrote the music to go with Chubynsky’s lyrics.