• q q
• The Future of Ukraine

This post is also available in:

Three Obstacles and Two Fundamental Problems

Three main tasks are posed as obstacles to our development and will have to be resolved by the coming crisis, whatever form it takes (from elections to a Maidan/coup):

• the enslavement of the economy and the impoverishment of the people,
• the insufficient level of defense effectiveness and warfare in general,
• the lack of resources for conducting an independent policy, above all — the ability to resist armed aggression on our own.

Behind them, like shadows, stand two fundamental problems that led to this situation:

• the state’s alienation from the people, its treatment of the country as a feeding ground,
• the refusal to participate in history, as a collective choice of Ukrainians.

They have led and will continue to lead again and again until they are resolved.

Behind these two fundamental problems lies one tragedy, without resolution of which the situation will repeat itself again and again, as it has for four hundred years already:

• the absence of a common self-identification among people living within the geographical borders of Ukraine.

One gave rise to two, two gave rise to three, three give rise to everything else.

Self-Identification: Essence and Scale of the Task

Self-identification is not an intellectual construct.
Not an ideological concept, no matter how true it may seem.
And certainly not a political technology construct.

Self-identification is something felt with one’s entire being; it cannot be faked.
It is what I felt when, at the age of five, I first saw the mosaics of Kyivan princes at the Golden Gate — there it is, mine, ours.

Self-identification is a consequence of accessing a living source.
One of the tasks of self-identification is to define oneself within the “friend — foe” system.

Ukrainians are a people cut off from their living sources.
Our connection to the sources has been replaced by political technology and ideological trash — a mess beyond cleanup.
Hence — all our problems. All of them — including imperfect legislation, corruption, and the lack of funds for defense.

A people with a well‑defined self-identification would never have given up the largest military grouping in Europe that we had in 1991 — they would simply have known what they were defending and where the true boundaries of their collective personality lay.

Our Current Level of Self-Identification

The highest level of self-identification available to us collectively (that is, to everyone) right now is:

• we are those who are being shelled. We are those who are defending themselves. We are those who resist.

Certain social groups may have a higher self-identification, but we are talking about the country and the people as a whole.
Moments of mass shelling are moments of temporary common unity.

Another clear marker:

• we are not them, we are not Russians.

These are powerful things, but they are completely insufficient for a national self-identification.
Because this is a self-identification of negation.
What we need is a self-identification of affirmation.

If we want to survive and succeed, we need the sense of a common people not only at moments when we are being shelled, but constantly.

A Thought Experiment: What Kind of Self-Identification Will Unite All of Ukraine?

You can now imagine, as a very useful mental exercise:

• what must this self-identification be like, so that it constantly ties together Lviv and Luhansk, Sumy and Simferopol, Odesa and Rivne?..

This self-identification must be above regionalism, above the traditions formed by the long‑term presence of Ukraine’s regions within different states, above historiosophical schools, above differences in religious denominations, above sectoral egoism.

If you appreciate the scale of the task facing us, a complex, divided people cut off from its living source, you will understand the magnitude of the challenge — and the answer:

• why it has not succeeded until now.

The “Fifth Project” and “Rus‑Ukraine” did not appear by chance — but in precise recognition of the level of the task before us.

However, I can tell you: if this monumental task is solved, the world will be shaken to its foundations by the strength and beauty of what emerges.
A downtrodden people will unleash such a level of creativity and transformation that it may become the brightest light in its history.

You say — impossible?
How can it be impossible, when we all saw it, experienced it, participated in it — at the beginning of the war.
It is possible. It is necessary. A matter of survival, by all means.

Main Conclusion

No particular task being addressed in Ukraine will be satisfactorily resolved without resolving the issue of a common self-identification.
And it is precisely there, first and foremost, that the main efforts of any authority that truly wishes well for the country and its people must be directed.