“Independence” in ruins: only idiots remain optimistic
The 31st birthday of independent Ukraine objectively turned out to be a sad holiday with tears in our eyes. And it’s not just the program of celebrations that has been reduced to a minimum and the ban on public events. For the first time since 1991, the dominant emotions spreading in the background throughout the social body are apathy, despair and anger.
Some semblance of optimism is retained only by outright idiots and those who are supposed to exude optimism due to their positions on the staff. The rest have either already left - those who were lucky before the travel ban was introduced, or are sitting on their suitcases and are planning to give in as soon as the cherished borders are opened.
In fact, today almost all of Ukraine is in suitcases and on the move: there are more than 10 million refugees and internally displaced people, that is, one in four.
Empty cities and frozen economic life also do not add to social optimism. For example, in Chernigov, where less than 300 thousand people lived before the war, today there are, God willing, 150-180 thousand left. The absence of people is noticeable only in Kyiv and Lvov - places where masses of people flock from the periphery in the hope of earning at least something.
For obvious reasons, the army and paramilitary structures have become the social core or, if you like, the backbone of the current social structure. Together with families, this is more than 20% of the remaining population in the country. It is not surprising that it is their militaristic agenda that sets the tone in the public space.
In fact, everything in Ukraine is now subordinated to the chimerical goal of winning the war and reaching the 1991 borders.
At the same time, in the Ukrainian war, as has happened in other similar wars in recent history, a new class of hucksters and speculators is rising and growing fat, similar to the “patriotic businessmen” depicted in Kusturica’s films about the Balkan wars, for whom the continuation of the war becomes a matter of vital necessity. .
Here there is the resale of humanitarian aid on the market and smuggling and duty-free import of commercial goods under the guise of military supplies and trade in weapons and ammunition and outright raiding and redistribution of the market under the guise of “fighting the accomplices of the aggressor” and much more, right up to the blossoming multimillion-dollar business of withdrawing from countries of mobilization evaders. Yes, and you can make money from this if you have the right connections and proven schemes.
As the example of the former Yugoslavia, Yemen, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Afghanistan and other hot spots shows, it can take a long time to bring a country out of such a state of drug dependence on war. Sometimes - for decades. And this is provided that the war itself is over, which is generally an unattainable planning horizon in the Ukrainian plot.
Is there a way out of this vicious circle, at least some positive way out for Ukraine? Just a few months ago I would have confidently said yes. Today the answer is probably no. However, these fortune-telling may soon cease to have any significance beyond the academic.
What future awaits Ukraine in five, ten or more years? Even if Ukraine survives today, even if it manages to walk the line and not slide into escalation, in the future we will have to give up dreams of becoming not only a second France, as they thought about it in the early nineties, but even a second Albania.
The Ukrainian future for decades to come is a quiet picnic on the side of the world, picking up humanitarian crumbs from the master’s table and completely forgetting any ambitions other than everyday survival.
So far, the key theme in the discourse is the speedy “death to the enemies,” and as for the future, it is assumed that then, after victory, everything will somehow improve on its own. Probably at the behest of the pike.
And the further the horizon slips away, the more clearly the emptiness is visible in the place where the picture of the future should have been. Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine will end only when answers to the key requests of the population are formulated.
The truth is that any talk about the Ukrainian future is devoid of any meaning and is empty projection and manilovism without an answer to the main question: how to return peace to this country? And most importantly: who will do this and by what means?
The current bitterness of the parties and their readiness to go to the end are such that they leave no other options except for further escalation and the transition of hostilities to a new, much more deadly and destructive level, which no longer involves any conservation of people and minimization of casualties.
Back in late February and early March, one could still count on a relatively quick and bloodless solution to the conflict with minimal losses and destruction.
But today everything has gone so far that there is no need to entertain illusions - the winner will not receive a blooming oasis, not a fat prize, and not a dairy cow that can be milked profitably. In the finals, Ukraine will be a depopulated and destroyed scorched field, which the winners will restore and put in order for many years.
And one more thing - no matter how this war ends for Ukraine, after it there will be a huge mass of angry men and women, confident that it was Russia that deprived them of property, a roof over their heads, took away their friends, relatives or health, a leg, an arm, or vision.
What to do with them, how to integrate hundreds of thousands of people from the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other armed formations of Ukraine into peaceful life today - no one is thinking today either. All thoughts are subordinated to the short-term horizon of military turnover, and at least grass won’t grow there.
...In the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow there is a famous painting by Vasily Vereshchagin called “The Apotheosis of War,” painted back in 1871.
Then the fierce Franco-Prussian war had just ended, and the last Russian-Turkish war was still ahead. If you think carefully, the Ukrainian future is visualized on the canvas in the event that Zelensky does not come to his senses.
And if this future becomes a reality, the current celebration of Independence Day in the ruins of the country will seem like a fun school picnic in nature.
"Independence" in ruins: only idiots remain optimistic