Six months of war falling on the Independence Day of Ukraine is a symbolism that is gloomy only at first glance.
Because, among other things, this war is a test of Ukrainian statehood.
Has Ukraine become a truly independent and sovereign state in 30 years, has it been able
to build sustainable institutions that can work even in extreme conditions?
Or is Vladimir Putin right and Ukraine is just a fragment of an empire, accidentally called a state?
This is what the whole plan was based on.
No one really thought about fighting.
They thought that the very sight of tank columns would be enough for the Ukrainian administrative
apparatus to collapse, politicians to flee, and officials to rush to replace the flag.
Six months later, we know for sure that Ukraine passed this test brilliantly.
All components of the Ukrainian state passed the test, put in a situation where you have to make
100 times more decisions in a hundred times worse conditions.
It is necessary to fight the war, take care of the victims and refugees, engage in daily diplomacy
in search of money and weapons simultaneously – and in the meantime be a normal state:
pay pensions and benefits, maintain infrastructure, register acts of civil status, fight crime, and so on.
There was no macroeconomic catastrophe in Ukraine: the hryvnia devalued slightly, inflation jumped, but not critically.
Ambulances, police and firefighters come to the calls.
The banking sector is working.
The education system is working, the courts are working, services are repairing pipes,
there is light and heat in the houses.
Yes, Vitali Klitschko warns the people of Kiev that the temperature in the houses in winter will be “below the norm”,
but we are talking about three degrees below the norm, and not about heating the apartments
with potbelly stoves, which could be expected.
You will laugh, but there is urban news from Kyiv: streets are being reconstructed and bike paths are being built.
In the capital of a country that is waging a high-intensity war on its territory.
If we recall the history of world wars, we say: it is impossible.
A country under martial law is always cutting off civilian infrastructure to a vital minimum, introducing cards,
strict consumption limits, and completely reorienting all production strictly to war.
Far from everywhere there was such horror as in besieged Leningrad or in Moscow,
which Hitler sieged, but when the state continues to function almost as usual - this has never happened.
Even the fuel crisis, which hit the citizens very hard in the first months of the war, was quickly resolved.
All types of fuel is now available.
A state at risk of losing up to half of its GDP by the end of the year, deprived of the lion's share of tax revenues,
and having lost a number of important industrial and agricultural centers as a result of the war and occupation.
The state, whose export is largely limited by blocked ports, continues to work and perform its daily functions.
Of course, Russian propagandists and some odious officials continue to say that Ukraine has ceased to exist as a state,
and the Russian army is opposed only by foreign volunteers.
However, it is too obvious that their words do not correspond to any reality.
But how did the Russian leadership have any illusions that Ukraine would quickly crumble?
The fact is that the collapse of the Soviet Union for its main participants – Russia, Ukraine and Belarus –
passed as casually as possible.
Nothing has changed so much for people in the moment that the concept of “sovereignty”
was not taken seriously by many for a long time.
It seemed to them that the border control that arose between the countries and passports
of different colors was a convention.
They say that earlier the headquarters was in Moscow, and now it will be in Kyiv.
The specific location of the chief had little effect on life on the conditional collective farm named
after Budyonny in the Dnepropetrovsk region.
And now, thirty-one years later, the Russian leadership decided that another change of flags in Ukraine
would take place just as routinely and without resistance.
Well, separate groups of Ukrainian patriots with guns and Molotov cocktails will give an unorganized rebuff,
the middle class will be a little indignant, a couple of thousand people will go to the rally
under the batons of the National Guard.
The rest will just continue to live as if nothing happened.
However, during the time when Ukraine and Russia lived, albeit close, but separate,
a national-state community was finally formed in Ukraine, which is ready to defend its sovereignty.
Now many people call the current invasion a war for the independence of Ukraine, but this is not entirely true.
In the war for independence, independence is gained.
And this war is a statement of independence.
This war demonstrates that Ukraine has long become a separate independent state,
with which it is pointless to wage a colonial war.
After all, a whole six months of war and constant shelling have passed, and the state has not crumbled,
has not fallen under the onslaught of a superior enemy.
It continues to work successfully in normal mode, although at the same time it is at war.
This Independence Day of Ukraine will be held more modestly than in previous years,
with a curfew and bans on mass events, without a parade and a day off.
But it will be the most important Independence Day in Ukrainian history.
It is the events of this war that Ukrainians will remember every next August 24th
and tell new generations how in 2022 their ancestors did not give Kyiv and Sumy, Kharkiv and Chernihiv to the invaders.
How they confirmed that the existence of Ukraine is not a historical accident,
but a value for which millions are ready to fight.
As for this date for Russia, it was not without symbolism either.
After six months of a protracted meat grinder, the country's leadership, together with the jingoistic patriots,
got what they wanted in the first days of the war – Russian tanks right on Khreshchatyk.
True, they do not participate in the parade, but stand in the form of exhibits of the exhibition
of the destroyed equipment of the occupiers.
And no flowers from the «liberated locals» - passers-by look at the rusty iron with squeamish curiosity.
And this complete discrepancy between the expectations of those who started the war and reality is in everything.
Instead of leadership in the new «world order» - the role of an international pariah.
Instead of a lightning-fast blitzkrieg – a protracted bloody massacre,
here in order to advance a kilometer, you have to sacrifice thousands of lives, which has been going on for half a year.
Regarding today's date, there are concerns that the Russian army may carry out a massive strike.
Is August 24 dangerous?
Yes, it is dangerous, for many reasons.
First, the CIA warns about the intensification of hostilities.
This war taught us to trust the CIA.
So far, everything that American intelligence has warned about has happened with the minimal deviations.
Secondly, Putin is a hybrid of a Soviet official with an everyday mystic.
Soviet logic dictates to be in time “by the date”: to hand over the object by May 1, to report before November 7.
Everyday mysticism is very inclined towards any kind of folklore numerology.
Six months of war, Ukraine's Independence Day, 450 years of St. Bartholomew's Night, on August 24,
1949, the NATO Treaty came into force.
And on August 24, 1814, Washington was burning along with the White House.
A mind inclined towards mystical thinking can attach itself to many things here.
Third, “half a year of war” sounds ominous.
Even people who sincerely believe in propaganda see that there is no end to this adventure.
We started cheerfully, for a new world order, and we finish sluggishly - we learn the names of rural settlements
in the Donetsk region, we argue how to say it correctly: Peskí or Péski - which two days later someone
takes for the third time again - either the Wagner PMC, or the Ministry of Defense, now Kadyrov,
then the brave troops of the DPR, which is invariably reported on TV.
They drew red lines on the map.
A lot of not very meaningful concepts have been introduced into circulation, such as
“attacks on decision-making centers,” but nothing is happening at the front.
After all, there is a reason propaganda lost quarter of its audience.
The viewer expects some plot twists, but these series has have been on for six months now
and there is nothing happening.
In such difficult conditions, the Russian command may have a strong desire to make a breakthrough,
to strike some kind of blow - just so that the falling asleep audience revives a little,
so that those who have stopped watching state news return to television screens.
On the other hand, it's not very clear what Putin could do that we haven't seen yet.
Militarily senseless, but bloody shelling of the largest cities in Ukraine?
So they go all 6 months without a break.
Some new breakthrough to Kyiv, Nikolaev, Kharkiv?
No one even fantasizes about this, because it is unrealistic to carry out operations
of this magnitude without mobilization, by an army that fought for six months and is notably battered.
The invasion of February 24 was prepared for at least 4 months, since October, 200 thousand
of the most combat-ready Russian forces were gathered for it.
On February 24, ammunition depots did not burn, the Ukrainian land was not sown with thousands
of pieces of broken Russian equipment, a hundred planes and helicopters did not turn to dust,
the cruiser Moskva was still afloat, 7 divisions of manpower did not replenish the lists of the dead and wounded,
the rest were not exhausted by battles.
The army in that state showed us what we saw.
It’s not very clear, to be honest, why after six months we should expect something else from it.
Most likely, there will be more atrocities.
But it is not clear where to expect a radical change from.
Probably the main question that may be asked after half a year of war is mobilization.
Is it possible to bring the army up to wartime parameters, to put citizens under arms?
I will leave purely military arguments to military analysts.
I will answer as a politician with some experience: with every day of the war, mobilization is less and less real.
When states go through revolutions or overturning elections, when political power changes dramatically,
experienced analysts always say: the new government has a window of reform.
Bearing in mind that it will close soon.
The new managers have from several months to a couple of years to carry out their radical transformations,
because then the citizens will get tired, the old bureaucracy will come to their senses – and you can no longer try,
everything will return to normal.
There are actions in politics that can only be done today, only this week, or only this year.
Mobilization is one such action.
Mobilization is carried out on the rise, when the militaristic frenzy is at its maximum,
when the desire to crush and destroy the enemy is seething, and most importantly,
when there are still no corpses in a significant amount.
When the war still looks like some kind of movie, some kind of game, a movement in which you want to participate.
To be honest, from the very beginning it was doubtful that some kind of “rally around the flag”
had happened in Russia, some kind of national unity in the need to take Kyiv.
Obviously, not from a good life, punitive articles of the Criminal Code were introduced
in a week and all the remnants of independent media were closed.
We realized that the citizens would not like it.
But in February or March, one could at least try to sell the idea of ​​a holy victorious war.
And today, the announcement of mobilization, martial law, will become a confession: everything went wrong.
And it is not clear how to sell it to a society that is clearly tired of everything that is happening.
It's one thing to call people to parade along Khreshchatyk: it can excite some young blood.
And it’s quite another thing to invite everyone to die together near a settlement
in the Kherson region with the poetic name Blagodatnoe.
We do not know whether real mobilization would have been possible in the first weeks.
It's pointless to fantasize now.
But today it is obvious: the political moment has been missed.
Therefore, do not take seriously the theories that attacks or explosions in Russia or in the Crimea
are a provocation of the Russian special services.
That, they say, this is so that hatred awakens in the citizens and queues line up
at the military registration and enlistment offices.
There are moments in history when such things fit perfectly into public sentiments,
but the lingering and inglorious war that went into the 7th month is definitely not such a moment.
What is the conclusion here? There are two, in fact.
The first conclusion is that this war made a single state out of Ukraine.
Both Maidans, every election, attitude towards every politician and every leader – all these events divided
the country into strictly opposite and strictly radical positions.
The war is the first fact of the common history for the whole of Ukraine.
This is a national myth that will form the foundation of the state.
The unification was very expensive, but no one asked Ukraine, now it just exists.
Ukrainian-speaking, Russian-speaking, villager, city dweller, mechanic or programmer – everyone lives in the war,
everyone goes through it right now.
When the war is over, in Ukraine, as in any normal democracy, discussions of everyone
with everyone will begin again, on any issues, but not on this one.
Now Ukraine has a national consensus.
With it Ukraine approaches its Independence Day.
The second conclusion: predicting any actions of Putin, we must remember that on February 24,
Putin was in his best shape.
Any task for him is now more difficult.
He has a worse army, less equipment, less money, plus a tired population.
We do not know the value of X, the amount of action that Putin could take in late February – early March.
But now we know for sure that this is X minus six months of a large-scale war.
It is X minus thousands of pieces of equipment, minus tens of thousands of dead and wounded, X minus 5% of GDP,
X minus budget revenues. And the most important thing for our regime is X minus a quarter of the ratings
of propaganda talk shows.
In general, the result is this: if we take two children born in Ukraine and Russia on February 23, 2022,
then on the first day of his life, the Russian child had much more basic advantages.
He was born in a country with twice the GDP per capita, in the center of a large post-Soviet region,
with a huge oil budget.
After 25 years, on average, he would have had higher incomes, a higher standard of living,
other things being equal, he would have lived a little better – by a quarter, maybe by a third.
Now the situation has turned in the opposite direction.
Now a child born in Ukraine will spend his entire adult life watching his country recover
and change with the help of the entire developed world.
There will be a lot of opportunities to participate.
The Russian one will inherit a very difficult situation, in which reparations to Ukraine will become the last problem.
It will grow in a country that is slowly and painfully recovering its reputation
and emerging from international isolation, in a country with a very high level of crime and violence in general.
Because we must remember a simple social fact: violence of various forms
and types in society is growing synchronously.
The more clashes of armed gangs of veterans of Ukraine on the street and in the news,
the more children fight at school, the more they are beaten at home.
Payments to Ukraine are just money.
A real account is a country in which it is more dangerous to live, in which it is more difficult
to do any business, in which a number of industries simply do not exist,
and talented people seek to go abroad at any cost.
Here's what those six months look like.
These six months paint us such decades ahead that no one will like the picture.
And it is happening because of this insane war in Ukraine unleashed by Putin.
See you tomorrow.