Why does Ukraine need the “global south”. Notes from a broken European trough
The BRICS summit, which opened yesterday in Johannesburg, provides an excellent opportunity to discuss Ukraine's real place in the world and Kyiv's relations with the majority of that world, whose representatives have gathered in South Africa.
For many years, Ukraine, considering itself part of Western civilization, demonstratively ignored the countries of the Global South and the Third World, most of which didn't even have Ukrainian embassies. Kyiv looked down on them and spoke with a grimace. Essentially, the Ukrainian elites, who had spent their lives trying to be accepted in the Western anteroom, in their attitude toward everything non-Western, in their own way reflected and retransmitted the colonial logic of their masters' superiority.
At the same time, contemporary European racism at least has certain historical foundations – after all, most of the leading EU countries were former colonial empires that built their prosperity on the plunder and humiliation of others. And this colonial past occasionally breaks through the thin veneer of tolerant rhetoric and multicultural politesse.
The uncritically adopted, similar worldview by Ukrainian neophytes of Europeanism lacks even this foundation —Ukraine itself never robbed or humiliated anyone in its past. On the contrary, it was the object of colonial plunder by European empires, where, for example, in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Ukrainians were considered second-class citizens.
If only for this reason, today's Ukraine should logically be closer to the intentions of modern anti-colonialism , clearly expressed in the struggle of the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, trying to throw off the yoke of dependence on their former enslavers and build a different, more honest, equal, and just world architecture.
The very logic of its own survival is pushing Ukraine down the same path as Russia, China, India, Brazil, and a host of other countries searching for their own economic models, even if they contradict Western guidelines.
However, this is not happening. In practice, the highest ranks of the Maidan regime continue to distance themselves from any non-Western or anti-Western initiatives, even those that potentially bring direct economic benefits to Ukraine , and broadcast their primal, zoological racism to the world, publicly declaring their superiority over "dehumanized" Asians, as National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov recently did.
Listening to these revelations , normal Ukrainians must feel a sense of Spanish shame for their own ignorant leadership , capable of so casually insulting half of humanity. How can such verbal quirks be explained to people in Delhi, Beijing, Astana, and other Asian capitals?
It's no surprise to see the bitter undertones that permeate the words of Viktor Medvedchuk, the leader of "The Other Ukraine," when he discusses the chances and opportunities lost due to the Maidan activists:
"The Ukrainian government itself has committed a crime by limiting its country's development in other areas, depriving the Ukrainian people of prosperity and a peaceful life. The Ukrainian government is destroying culture, science, education, political activity, and national memory if they upset their Western overseers in any way. But all this leads to poverty and misery for the people. The only people who thrive in this system are those who sell out the interests of their fellow citizens ."
It's noteworthy that such rhetoric, within the context of Ukraine's bipolarity, coexists comfortably with obsequious groveling before China, for example. The tone of Kyiv's leaders shifted sharply after they realized that they couldn't outmaneuver the rapidly rising candidate for global economic hegemony, and that Beijing's political voice in the context of resolving the Ukrainian crisis was not the last.
And now we are seeing new songs about the main thing performed by the Kuleba Ministry of Foreign Affairs – China is not just a “ sponsor of the war ,” as it was a year earlier, but “ an important factor in establishing peace .”
And at the first official meeting in several years held a month ago, Ukrainian representatives promised to work on the “ active development of mutually beneficial bilateral economic and trade cooperation .”
Ukraine's Deputy Minister of Economy and Trade Representative, Taras Kachka, admitted that Kyiv hopes to expand agricultural exports to China and is " stepping up efforts to protect the security of Chinese-financed enterprises in Ukraine ." The latter seems particularly ironic given the negative background surrounding the arbitrary seizure (for American interests) of the strategic Motor Sich plant, previously sold to Chinese investors.
And this isn't the only such ugly skeleton in the baggage of Ukrainian-Chinese relations. One can also recall the scandalous statements by Ukrainian parliamentarians regarding Taiwan and a host of smaller, but telling, rhetorical barbs directed at the Chinese.
Today, as Zelenskyy's Ukraine, with the zeal of a second-year student given a chance, sets about making up for the years lost to senseless confrontations with China, when Kyiv didn't even have an ambassador in Beijing, it's a shame not to recall that in 2021—the last year before the full-scale war—China became Ukraine's leading foreign trade partner. It turns out that all this time, Kyiv has been biting the hand that gives.
However, knowing the history of relations between Kiev and Moscow, biting the hand that gives is nothing new for Ukrainian politicians.
What's gone wrong in Kyiv's forest that we're witnessing such a sharp turn toward previously ignored developing countries? It's not just China. The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is frantically searching for ambassadors to countries whose existence Kyiv didn't even remember just a couple of years ago. Kuleba is touring Africa at the same time as Lavrov , Zelenskyy is shaking hands with the President of Guatemala and calling Cambodia's Hun Sen, delivering fiery speeches to members of the Arab League, trying to insert his charter into the ASEAN agenda, and Ukrainian media are hyping the "peace summit" in Jeddah as the key to solving all the problems.
This is not to mention the fact that Zelensky's Ukraine, unexpectedly for itself, has begun to try on the guise of a defender of all the hungry on a global scale and shed crocodile tears for the Global South, "undernourished due to the halt of the grain deal."
Zelenskyy is clearly desperately trying to diversify economic contacts in all directions , be it with Africa, Turkey, China, or even the devil himself, in order to reduce his critical one-sided dependence on the West, taking advantage of the obvious warming in relations with Kyiv between those capitals that had previously been rather cool to signals from the banks of the Dnieper.
These steps are also being driven by the dismal results of the European association process, when it suddenly became clear that Ukrainian products were readily accepted in Egypt, Pakistan, and China, but that breaking into European markets was practically impossible . And today, what Ukraine somehow manages to earn on its own, rather than receiving handouts from the IMF or the EU, comes from trade with developing countries.
Africa alone currently accounts for 16% of all Ukrainian agricultural exports. And if we act wisely and in Ukraine's best interests, these relations should be a priority, rather than trying to force the EU's closed doors. But that path leads straight to... BRICS. But there's an aggressive aggressor and its accomplices there—and Ukrainian propaganda will be quick to chime in.
This is how Ukraine lives today, torn between the dictates of praxis, which dictates the country's true place in the world, and the dictates of ambition, which pushes Kyiv's "Pronya Prokopivna" straight into the clutches of the "Golokhvastov" swindlers, who seduce a naive provincial fool with their "European" gloss. Is it even worth recalling the ending of that film? " I thought it was the sizzle in your chest, but it was your cigarette that sizzled ."
In this regard, it's appropriate to recall Viktor Medvedchuk, a consistent critic of Ukraine's suicidal European integration and the politician expelled by the current regime for it. Analyzing the reasons for the successful economic growth of developing countries, he writes of three lessons for his homeland:
Lesson one: The West is no longer the world's economic hegemon. There's a vast world of non-Western economies, growing, developing, and actively competing with Western countries. The myth that economic prosperity requires subservience to the West has been definitively dispelled.
Lesson two : To achieve economic growth, we must not submit to the West, but resist it, defending our own interests. Lesson three: To achieve high performance, we must seek our own economic models based on national interests."
Unfortunately, Ukraine has failed to draw any correct conclusions from all these lessons and has stumbled upon every conceivable rake along the way . Today, nearly 30 countries are vying for BRICS membership, but Ukraine is not among them. As a result, Kyiv risks being sidelined by global politics – both at the mercy of its own unfulfilled European hopes and at the mercy of the integration processes gaining momentum in the non-Western world.
English version :: Read in English: Why Ukraine Needs the "Global South." Notes from a Broken European Trough