{"id":9846,"date":"2023-01-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-30T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aspeninstitutece.softmedia.cz\/article\/2023\/ukraine-europes-unfinished-work\/"},"modified":"2024-09-30T19:17:30","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T17:17:30","slug":"ukraine-europes-unfinished-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/article\/2023\/ukraine-europes-unfinished-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine: Europe\u2019s Unfinished Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the summer of 2014, a few Ukrainian friends and I were invited to dine at the home of a well-known Regensburg physician. These were the days when the \u2018Russian Spring\u2019<\/em> was sweeping through southern and eastern Ukraine, Crimea had already been annexed and the pseudo-republics of Luhansk and Donetsk had been formed. The conversations at the table were exactly about this.<\/p>\n

Our intelligent and enlightened host vehemently tried to persuade us that the hostilities in eastern Ukraine were a civil war waged by those who disagreed with the \u2018Kyiv regime\u2019<\/em>. We replied that we were from Ukraine and could see with our own eyes what was happening and understood that this was a Russian intervention, but our arguments were met with desperate resistance. The host argued that we were victims of Kyiv\u2019s propaganda and that he was living in a free world and reading the free press, which allegedly gave him an objective perspective on the developments.<\/span><\/p>\n

That meeting, one in a series of many similar encounters, made me realize that <\/span>the Western world had long and persistently \u201cfailed to see\u201d<\/em> Ukraine and that all of its knowledge about Ukraine was coming through a Russian lens.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Over the course of many years, Kremlin propagandists have been pushing the idea of the so-called \u2018Russian world\u2019:<\/span>\u00a0an ideological construct based on the claim that there are no Ukrainians or Belarusians, but all of them form a single Russian nation. In line with this construct, anyone who speaks Russian is considered to be Russian. On this basis, Russia felt entitled to \u2018protect\u2019<\/em> the rights of Russian-speaking people anywhere in the world and invaded Ukrainian Crimea. The effect of the Kremlin\u2019s powerful propaganda, targeting Western Europe for decades, was that thousands of Europeans (including our hospitable Regensburg host) were completely oblivious to Ukraine.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the arms of Russia<\/h3>\n

Struck by such \u2018night blindness\u2019, Western Europe willingly allowed itself to be taken hostage by Russia. Perhaps the most eloquent example of this short-sighted fascination with Russia was Europe\u2019s energy dependency. Ever <\/span>since the early 1990s, Russia has been engaged in \u2018gas wars\u2019<\/em> with Ukraine. The aim of the gas confrontation was to discredit Ukraine in the eyes of the global community<\/span> and to consequently strengthen Russian influence in the region and across Europe. <\/span><\/p>\n

The alternative Nord Stream and South Stream gas pipelines (bypassing Ukraine) were not designed to increase Russian gas supplies or to enhance the reliability of Europe\u2019s energy supplies, but instead to enable selective cutoffs of gas supplies to Belarus, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece. This idea was voiced back in 2009 by Mikhail Korchemkin, director of East European Gas Analysis, a US consulting company, in his article in the well-known Ukrainian weekly \u2018Zerkalo Nedeli\u2019. In his view, the purpose of this project was to undermine the energy security of these countries, strangling them in a warm gas embrace.<\/span>\u00a0The current energy crisis is the outcome of these efforts.<\/span><\/p>\n

The American historian Timothy Snyder wrote: \u201cThe gift of Russian propagandists has been to take things apart, to peel away the layers of the onion until nothing is left but the tears of others and their own cynical laughter.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even a cursory glance at Ukraine\u2019s history shows that since the tenth century the country has always been part of European processes (sometimes as a subject, sometimes as an object). Its history was dramatic at times, with periods when Ukrainians had to live without a state of their own.<\/p>\n

Ukraine’s dignity<\/h3>\n

Ukraine\u2019s struggle for independence from Russia has been going on for centuries. Its current acute phase began in 2014, however, with the Euromaidan events marking a preamble. The formal \u2018stumbling block\u2019 was Ukraine\u2019s application for an association agreement with the European Union. The Yanukovich regime, which led the country to impoverishment and destruction during its three years in power, was not interested since the associate membership with the European Union would enforce honest and transparent reforms. <\/span><\/p>\n

A regime that had built one of the most robust corruption systems over a short time was not willing to play fair. The\u00a0<\/span>stolen hope of reunification with Europe (which, for many Ukrainians, became a symbol of living by the civilized rules of the modern world) led to mass protests both in Kyiv and across Ukraine, soon dubbed \u2018Euromaidan\u2019<\/em>. <\/span>The protest against corruption, against a government that had sold out its country\u2019s future to Putin\u2019s Russia, eventually evolved into a resistance movement defending basic decency in the life of Ukrainian society.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over time, the Ukrainian revolution became known as the \u2018revolution of dignity\u2019<\/em>. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This expression perfectly reflects what actually happened. The recognition of its own dignity and the possibility of building a new life under new civilized rules is the main leitmotif of Ukraine\u2019s current struggle for the right to be part of the family of European nations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Declared in 1991, Ukraine\u2019s independence opened up new opportunities and new development paths for the country. This process progressed with difficulty, but was irreversible. <\/span>Over the last thirty years, Ukraine underwent a rather rapid political westernization: the spread of Western institutions across a growing part of Ukraine\u2019s territory, coupled with the popularization of European values<\/span> and behavioral patterns among a growing number of Ukrainians. The \u2018revolution of dignity\u2019 undoubtedly renewed Ukrainian society and also laid the foundations of modern Ukrainian democracy.<\/span><\/p>\n

One Euromaidan activist described the feelings expressed by people on the Maidan as follows: \u201cWe came to Maidan looking for Europe, but we have found Ukraine.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The realization that Ukraine could irrevocably leave Russia\u2019s sphere of influence prompted the Kremlin to go to war, which began in the spring of 2014 with the occupation of Donbas and the annexation of Crimea and still continues.<\/span><\/p>\n

Russia strikes again<\/h3>\n

Russia\u2019s full-scale attack on Ukraine on 24 February 2022 has once again, as in 2014, put Ukraine at the centre of global attention. The eyes of politicians, the military, religious and public figures and millions of citizens from different continents turned to Ukraine. <\/span><\/p>\n

As Timothy Snyder noted, the world has found out about Ukraine because it is defending itself.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The war in Ukraine triggered reactions among Western intellectuals. <\/span>In April 2022, the American edition of e-flux Journal published an article entitled \u201cThe West at War: On the Self-Enclosure of the Liberal Mind\u201d by Boris Buden, a Slovenian-born writer and cultural theorist living in Berlin.<\/span> The author depicts Ukraine as an object rather than an acting subject. He writes: \u201c<\/em><\/span>The Ukrainians, against their will, have been forced into this war and must now fight it, but not only for themselves: they must fight as a proxy for the West. The war in Ukraine has become a proxy war between two imagined adversaries, the West and Putin.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

In parallel, an <\/span>article \u201cWar and Indignation\u201d<\/em> by the eminent German philosopher J\u00fcrgen Habermas was published in <\/span>Germany\u2019s <\/span>S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung <\/span>on 28 April.<\/span> In the article, Habermas articulates the dilemma faced by the West: the defeat of Ukraine versus the escalation of a geographically limited conflict into World War III. While he notes that Putin has brutally attacked Ukraine, the latter is not at the focus of his thinking (since he ultimately denies its subjectivity). Assessing the asymmetry of threats coming from Putin and NATO, the German philosopher puts forward the claim of a \u2018politics of fear\u2019<\/em> as a rational argument for responsible politics. The \u2018politics of fear\u2019<\/em> delineates the limits of military assistance to Ukraine. <\/span><\/p>\n

While it might be a peculiar compromise, this is exactly what, in Habermas\u2019s opinion, helps to avoid the risk of nuclear apocalypse. The author contrasts the national (Ukrainian) and post-national (European) mentalities underlying the different attitudes to war. <\/span><\/p>\n

This distinction is particularly meaningful when we compare \u201cthe heroic resistance of Ukrainians and their obvious readiness for self-sacrifice with what one would expect from Western Europeans in a similar situation.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although he finally concludes with the assertion that Ukraine cannot lose this war, he argues a few paragraphs earlier that this war cannot be won, so negotiations with Putin will be inevitable.<\/span><\/p>\n

Intellectual war<\/h3>\n

With his article, Habermas sparked a heated debate among Western intellectuals. In May, the Slovenian Marxist philosopher and sociologist Slavoj \u017di\u017eek published an article criticizing German pacifism. Putin plays on the fears of pacifists whenever he talks about \u2018red lines\u2019<\/em>. \u201cBullies by nature always count on their victims not to fight back,\u201d<\/em> \u017di\u017eek writes. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTo prevent a\u00a0<\/em><\/span>wider war \u2013 to establish any kind of deterrence \u2013 we, too, must draw clear lines.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The philosopher notes that today\u2019s pacifism entails moral compromises. He warns that Putin\u2019s mission is to dismantle Europe. He uses many levers to do this, including gas wars. The author speculates on Europe\u2019s gas policy towards Russia, formulating the claim that Russia is counting on Europe\u2019s inability to do anything \u2018heroic\u2019<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

In July, Timothy Snyder published his response to Habermas in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, entitled \u201cGermans have been involved in the war, chiefly on the wrong side.\u201d<\/em><\/span> The American historian rebukes the German philosopher for juggling concepts, passing off the manipulation of emotions as ethical principles. Living in a German context prevents Habermas from understanding the experience of the Ukrainians.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Hrytsak writes that the experience of the two Ukrainian Maidans, the collapse of the \u2018Russian Spring\u2019 and the volunteer movement led to the discovery of the \u2018Ukrainian idea\u2019<\/em>. It is the idea of freedom (in this case: synonymous with independence), i.e. freedom from Russia, and the freedom to build a society of prosperity, where human dignity is protected and the desire for justice is not punished by law.<\/span> We can add that it is also clearly demonstrated by Ukrainian\u2019s fierce resistance in the war against Russian aggression.<\/span><\/p>\n

New challenges are yet to come<\/h3>\n

The war in Ukraine has also highlighted many problems in well-established global and international institutions and organizations. The inability of organizations such as the UN (with a representative of the aggressor state in the Security Council, blocking all decisions), the International Committee of the Red Cross and others to act quickly and effectively has become visible to everyone. The highly publicized conflict between the leadership of Amnesty\u00a0<\/span>International and its Ukrainian office provides another confirmation of this situation.<\/span><\/p>\n

What has already become obvious is that such organizations, established under different conditions, fail to address the challenges of the present day. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Once the war in Ukraine is over, it is quite likely that many of those entities will inevitably face the need to reform, if not completely \u2018restart\u2019 their activities (much like the global security system). The <\/span>Israeli historian and futurologist Yuval Harari made the following comment on this crisis: \u201cOne possibility is that this moment in history will be remembered as the time when the global order finally collapsed. And the institutions that had been built to preserve world peace and security, to prevent global cataclysms such as famine and epidemics, fell apart. Then the era of wars, famine and poverty came again. This is one scenario. The other scenario is that Putin will not be allowed to win the war in Ukraine. And the world order will be restored and reinforced.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The war in Ukraine has revealed the need for decolonization, not only for Ukraine but also for the peoples of Europe. This is mainly<\/span> (but not only) <\/span>true of the countries that were in the sphere of interest of the USSR after World War II.<\/span> For example, after the 24 February, the streets of Prague were flooded with cars with Ukrainian number plates, many of them quite expensive. A young Czech woman, who was making coffee for me in a caf\u00e9 in Prague, said she was amazed to see wealthy Ukrainians. <\/span><\/p>\n

Until recently, \u2018Ukrainians\u2019 were synonymous with \u2018cleaners\u2019 or \u2018builders\u2019 to the Czechs, in contrast to the wealthy Russians. If such a belief is held by the inhabitants of a European capital located 1,200 kilometres from Kyiv, it is not surprising that countries located further west know even less about Ukraine. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In recent months, Ukrainian diplomacy has achieved considerable successes in the international arena. Much remains to be done, however, for Ukraine\u2019s cultural diplomacy in Europe. \u201cThat it took so much effort (and so much unnecessary bloodshed) for the West to see Ukraine at all reveals the challenge that Russian nihilism poses. It shows how close the West came to conceding the tradition of democracy,\u201d<\/em> Timothy Snyder believes.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Thinking about…: Why the world needs Ukrainian victory https:\/\/t.co\/Hk1gC5vYAf<\/a><\/p>— Timothy Snyder (@TimothyDSnyder) January 23, 2023<\/a><\/blockquote>