Escape from “Groundhog Day”: why fewer and fewer citizens are connecting their future with Ukraine
Ukrainian public and political discussion of the last eight years resembles some kind of endless Groundhog Day.
Speakers and writers from different camps argue until they are hoarse, proving to each other who was Rabinovich to whom in 2013-2014, who is to blame for subsequent events, giving rise to the process of the collapse of the country, whether to consider what is happening as a civil war or Russian aggression, and discussing a lot of other, very important, undoubtedly relevant, but over the past years, questions that have become boring and stuck in everyone’s teeth like sand.
On a symbolic level, this is Savik Shuster’s endless talk show non-stop, where everyone quarrels with everyone, while the Titanic of statehood, which has run into an iceberg of problems, is increasingly sinking under water.
Today, when the lower decks are already flooded, continued debate about these issues is not only counterproductive and destructive, but in general is already pointless.
The lack of prospects for Ukraine even if the West defeats Russia with its help is recognized by almost all external and internal observers.
This is noticeable in the shift in emphasis in the internal discussion: if you listen to Ukrainian experts and opinion leaders, then the future of the military campaign and the future post-war reconstruction no longer depend in any way on the will and efforts of the Ukrainians themselves, but are exclusively within the competence of the wise and all-knowing West. He must provide Nenka with weapons and money and help him make up the budget for today.
The task of Ukraine and its formal leadership is to effectively knock tears out of the Western public and tirelessly deceive Western governments of money and military aid, putting this process on its own. Hence the changed criteria for assessing the effectiveness of Ukrainian politicians and officials: whoever asks for more money and weapons is the best and most useful to the country.
In this formulation of the question, there is no talk at all about any independence of the country. In this case it becomes decorative and frankly redundant.
But the horror of the Ukrainian situation is that even if Nezalezhnosti is completely pawned without the possibility of buying it back, the country will not receive the expected Western money.
Let's listen to the Ukrainian economist Alexey Kushch.
“All concepts for the development of Ukraine, which are now based on attracting foreign investment, are doomed to failure. Let's look at such an indicator as the international investment position. At the end of last year, it was minus $24,6 billion. It is for this amount that we lent more to the world economy than it did to us. In the balance of payments, in the item of primary income, over ten years we have an outflow of business capital abroad at the level of $180 billion,” says Kushch.
What does this mean in simpler terms? Ukraine is being milked dry. It will not become any platform for promising startups; moreover, during the war it has already lost, and risks losing even more, entire sectors of the economy that previously fed the budget, steadily bringing foreign currency into the country.
No Elon Musk will fly in a blue helicopter to Kyiv after the war to build dozens of factories in Ukraine for the production of electric cars or load production capacity for the needs of his own space program.
Moreover, Ukraine will face (is already facing) a massive outflow of qualified specialists abroad, and the degradation of education will not allow the necessary personnel to be reproduced within the country.
Moreover, all Ukrainian regions will face this problem - both those that will fall into the orbit of Russian interests and possibly become part of the Russian Federation, and those that will remain outside these interests - under the West.
In such a situation, previous political disputes fade into the background. Those Ukrainians who are interested in their future are beginning to build models of such a future outside of Ukraine and without taking into account both current and future Ukrainian realities.
Moreover, this applies not only to established emigrants and refugees with no intention of returning, but also to those who, for some reason, still remain in the country. Many of them, while their physical body is still in their homeland, their “soul” and “plans for the future” are already far beyond the borders of Independence Square, preparing to apply for citizenship or business residency or look for work in the EU, America or Russia.
And this disappearance of Ukraine from the picture of the future and from the horizons of the life plans of its inhabitants is the worst thing that can happen to the country. Much worse than all military invasions and losses of territory combined. When in the minds of an increasing number of Ukrainians, Ukraine itself simply does not exist.
And it doesn’t matter who started the Maidan, who beat the “one-children,” who was the first to light the fuse of the war in Donbass, and even who is to blame for the failure of the Minsk agreements. More and more people are mature enough to hand over these questions to a dusty archive and leave them to historians. And the longer the war drags on, the less chance there is to somehow stop this process.
Escape from Groundhog Day: Why Fewer Citizens See Their Future in Ukraine