In fact, we are fighting two wars. One traditional one is against the enemy who attacked us, occupied our lands and declares plans to erase Ukraine from the political map of the world.
Here everything is more or less clear: until we prove to the horde on the battlefield that touching us is more expensive for ourselves, we must grit our teeth and fight. No matter how difficult it is and no matter how much you want peace. You can sit down at the negotiating table only by forcing Russia to admit fait accompli: Ukraine exists and it will decide how to live, with whom to be friends, what language to speak, and the like.
Everything we can discuss with Russia: border regime, post-war trade, transport corridors and the like. Even post-war borders. But!!! Russia will not have any voting rights, much less a veto, in Ukrainian affairs. And this formula is much more important than borders and even (still illusory) entry into NATO or (more realistic) accession to the EU. This war is for Ukrainian subjectivity. Either we will defend it (and not only in relation to Russia) or - despite all the sacrifices and heroism - we lost the war. This is truly a case of subjectivity or death.
The second war is more insidious and dangerous. Because we are fighting for the return of the stolen Ukrainian state. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian state is not a republic in the original sense in which the word sounds in Latin: Res Publica - a common cause. Of course, Ukrainians (both ethnic and political) are the beneficiaries of Ukrainian statehood. Mostly in terms of a separate identity.
Despite the fact that the state interferes in this subtle, delicate and I would even say “intimate” issue, the Procrustean bed that chose to make Ukrainians (and not only) “Soviet people” without family and without memory has long been in the dustbin of history. We can and do debate what it means to be Ukrainian, how inclusive Ukrainian culture and the Ukrainian historical pantheon should be, but this is our discussion. And only we, Ukrainians, must seek and provide answers to these difficult questions.
But with the beneficiaries of the material benefits that Ukrainian statehood provides, everything is much sadder. Through the use of land, mineral resources, taxes and “security officials” (it’s hard to call them law enforcement), the state redistributes assets that should belong to many in favor of a small clique of those in power. Moreover, their names are changing: the day before yesterday it was Yanukovych and the Donetsk people, before him - Kuchma with a brood of oligarchs who actually privatized the state, then - Poroshenko with Medvedchuk and with their Kononenkos and Svinarchuks, today Zelensky - with “five or six effective managers.” The main sign of a stolen state is that it is more profitable to be an official than a businessman. Because power in such a privatized state is the most marginal commodity. Its bearers actively convert it into money and other assets. Moreover, from the leaders of the AMCU, governors and prosecutors to the district military registration and enlistment offices. And here we are quite similar to Russia, which Karamzin once described in one word - “They steal.”
But there is a significant difference between Russian and Ukrainian statehood. One is becoming more and more hereditary (the Patrushev dynasty and the idea of \u200b\u200bthe “non-nobility” promoted by Patrushev Sr. are a vivid example of this), the second is short-term. Because here every electoral cycle is like a personnel earthquake, and new officials, in the worst communist traditions, believe that the real story should begin with them. That’s why they steal primitively, unsystematically, like on the last day. Because no one in this state thinks even a few years ahead: they can survive the night and stand for the day. And at least grass won’t grow there...
Our war is so complex because we need to liberate not only the occupied territories, but also to re-privatize the state, which should become a “common cause” and not an instrument for enriching those in power and the “businessmen” close to them. If we do not want the result of this terrible war to be the implementation of the principle “Ukraine should be plundered by Ukrainians” plus permission for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to have a separate Ukrainian identity, we must understand why the Americans call their war of independence Revolutionary War. Because war is about the war for independence from the British, and revolutionary is about social and political changes that, over the course of a century and a half, turned distant overseas colonies, the world periphery, into the leader of the free world.
Because any victory at the front, any technological revolution in armaments, any heroism on the front line and volunteerism in the rear, any Kursk offensive only gives us a chance for a different Ukraine. To re-privatize the state and create a real Res Publica - a common cause of millions of Ukrainians. A state that will serve us, and not the caste of ministers, governors, generals, prosecutors and other “effective managers.”
Three times already, although we had won, we lost, missing the chance for radical transformations that our uprisings, which we call “revolutions,” gave us. Because when independence is a goal, and not a chance to create an effective state, then “identity is our everything.” Just ask the Algerians. Today no one will call them a French colony anymore. But also a successful nation...
