Ukraine has five years to turn battlefield survival into lasting independence

24 August, 02:12 PM

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Valerii Zaluzhnyi: Instead of building the Ukrainian state that thousands fought and died for, we got a clan-based oligarchic republic (Photo: Valerii Zaluzhnyi / Facebook)

“Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or dread them, for the Lord your God goes with you. He will not leave or abandon you.” — Deuteronomy 31:6

Remember the past without losing sight of the future.

Thirty-five years of Ukrainian independence are not only an occasion to reflect on the road we have traveled. More importantly, they are a chance to decide where we go next.

If we compare our journey with the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt to the “land flowing with milk and honey,” then we have five years left in the desert.

Those five years may prove the hardest. They will demand unity, concentrated effort and the determination to remain free. We must fight not only an external enemy, but also the “sandstorms” of lies, exhaustion, disappointment and fading hope.

As Ivan Franko wrote in his poem Moses: “And the people lost faith and said, ‘The prophets lied! We are to live and die in the desert! What else are we waiting for? And how long?’”

Ukraine today may be closer than ever to the point at which doubt about the road ahead begins to seep into society. The questions “What are we waiting for?” and “How long?” are already appearing with growing frequency, now written not on stone tablets but on cardboard signs.

To answer the question of what comes next — and how we avoid losing our way before finally emerging from the darkness of the desert — we must look honestly at the road Ukraine has traveled over the past 35 years and identify the strategic priorities for the decisive stage ahead.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geostrategic turning point of the 20th century. Russian President Vladimir Putin calls it the greatest mistake. That choice of words is no accident. A geopolitical rupture cannot be reversed. A mistake, however, can supposedly be corrected.

In much of the West, the Soviet Union’s collapse is understood as an objective historical process: Empires eventually decline and disintegrate. The Kremlin sees it differently. In Moscow’s view, the collapse should never have happened.

As long as that conviction shapes Russian policy, Moscow’s refusal to accept Ukrainian independence will remain fundamental. It leaves little room for compromise, whether through the illusion of elections or promises of a durable peace.

The “prophets” must not lie about that.

But Russia’s leadership has also made a grave mistake of its own. Its obsession with correcting history has already led to a full-scale war in which there can be no true winner — and one that Russia itself is incapable of winning.

Ukrainian independence emerged from the collapse of an empire, but it was also the culmination of decades and centuries of struggle by our ancestors for freedom. We must remember that.

At the very least, we must remember the price paid by those who, in the 35th year of the independence they fought for, were finally laid to rest in their native soil.

Today’s defenders must see and remember this as well. Will they, too, become victims of political manipulation and begin looking for peace somewhere else, as thousands who have not yet returned already have?

In 1991, history shifted like tectonic plates, producing an earthquake in the heart of Europe. It is difficult to know how much hope and expectation that moment generated among the political elite of the time. It is even harder to know whether that elite was capable of turning those expectations into the practical work of building a state.

Ukraine needed strong institutions capable of developing and protecting its economy, military, science, technology and education.

Today, we can say with confidence that something went wrong.

Instead of building the Ukrainian state for which thousands fought and died, we created a clan-based oligarchic republic. By serving the interests of a few, that system systematically eroded public trust and social cohesion in a society that, despite two revolutions, truly united only in wartime.

Will that unity be enough for the hardest stretch of the journey? Or will those concerned only with their own interests regain control and once again decide the future of our freedom?

All of this grew out of missed opportunities — including our failure to preserve our own history.

A history that some in Ukraine are still trying to rewrite.

The period since 1991 could be analyzed endlessly. But perhaps the most tragic mistake was believing that the same whirlwind of history that gave us freedom would somehow protect it for us.

Those of us who were 18 in 1991 and trusted that elite had to correct its mistakes with our own blood in 2014. Whether they were truly mistakes or part of someone’s plan is something history has yet to determine.

Neglect of national defense and security was the central failure that ultimately made this bloody full-scale war possible.

Every difficult political decision must be judged in the circumstances in which it was made. We should understand and respect that. Given the weakness and instability of a young state’s institutions, concessions to Russia may genuinely have seemed necessary more than 30 years ago to avoid war.

But was it farsighted to disarm on such a massive scale, cut military spending and decide almost overnight how to divide the Black Sea Fleet?

If that was the price of postponing war, then Ukraine was not simply buying time. It was systematically making itself weaker.

We, the citizens of Ukraine, did more than disarm our military. We lost strategic factories and enterprises, scientific capacity and advanced manufacturing — precisely the assets we now lack as we try to build our own missile and missile-defense industries.

War is a terrible condition for any society. State policy should make every possible effort to prevent escalation toward war. But escalation can be avoided in different ways.

The essential task is to build enough national strength that the country can defend itself when the critical moment comes.

There is another approach: proclaiming sincere intentions and noble aspirations while neglecting defense and security, entering into confrontation and simply hoping that war will somehow never arrive.

The Budapest Memorandum teaches us another lesson.

Today, that lesson is not primarily about nuclear weapons. Scientific and technological progress is producing weapons that are far cheaper and simpler, but no less lethal. These systems will shape the wars of the future.

The real lesson of the Budapest Memorandum is that a country’s security cannot rest exclusively on outside assurances — even formal guarantees.

No document can replace a state’s own capacity to defend itself. And that capacity ultimately depends on whether its people are prepared to resist and fight, even over the long term.

I do not reject international alliances or security blocs. But they are valuable only when backed by a country’s own strength, economic resilience and technological advantage.

We must align ourselves with those whose defense strategies reflect an understanding of — and readiness for — the profound changes that scientific and technological progress is bringing to the world.

No assessment of Ukraine’s independence can ignore 2014.

That was the beginning of the war we had tried to prevent not by becoming stronger, but by disarming and drifting toward Russia.

It was an extraordinarily difficult year of pain and loss, but also of hope.

War revealed Ukrainian society’s immense capacity for self-organization and resistance. People were willing to assume responsibility when state institutions could not act in time or simply did not exist.

Society finally understood the importance of the military. Trust in the Armed Forces grew. The Armed Forces themselves began to change. And the state was forced to make security the foundation of national policy.

The wider war was halted then. Once again, as in 1994, our lack of preparedness left us with only one viable decision.

Minsk delivered another lesson: Opportunities do not come twice.

There are moments when decisions must be made rather than postponed until the accumulated problems can no longer be resolved by anything except war.

Despite the tragedy that preceded it, Ukraine was given an opportunity to rethink independence and its place in the world — a place that can be secured only through our own strength.

Ultimately, the years of diplomatic maneuvering and attempts to negotiate with Russia led to the war many had predicted.

It is difficult to know whether negotiations with Russia today may also prove to be a trap, because a cease-fire may be the only way out of the current situation.

But one thing is certainly a trap: a weakened, demoralized and politicized military. Such an army would leave Ukraine with no way out of whatever negotiations may bring.

Then came 2022, and another “sandstorm” revealed an entirely different kind of war.

Modern warfare is no longer only about tanks, artillery and missiles. It is about unmanned systems, artificial intelligence, autonomous control, data collection and analysis, robotic platforms and resilient satellite communications.

In some respects, war has become cheaper and more accessible. It has also become more brutal.

Ukraine has become one of the principal proving grounds of the 21st century’s military-technological revolution. It should now become one of the world’s strongest states — a country capable of creating the weapons of a new era.

That is another lesson.

War accelerates scientific and technological progress. Tragically, that same progress kills civilians every day while creating opportunities for others to profit.

Unfortunately, history shows that this has always been the case.

No amount of attractive marketing can substitute for a real strategy grounded in science and experience.

Only a clearly defined political objective, supported by carefully developed strategies — including a military strategy — can provide a path toward achieving that objective.

And our objective remains VICTORY.

The Ukrainian people’s resistance has affirmed our national agency and demonstrated the need to abandon the policy of so-called “gray zones” in international relations.

We are leaving behind the role of a buffer between East and West, a position in which both sides tried to keep us for decades.

Ukraine has already become an epicenter of the emerging security architecture of Europe.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine have accumulated unique experience in fighting a full-scale technological war against a superior enemy — experience no NATO military possesses.

Only those who refuse to recognize the realities of modern warfare and remain trapped in a Cold War model of deterrence can ignore that fact.

Ukraine is now one of the key actors shaping Europe’s new security architecture.

Whether everyone in Europe is ready to accept that remains an open question.

We therefore face the central question: How do we turn the experience of this war into a lasting national security system?

How do we travel through this desert for perhaps another five years without turning on one another or losing ourselves in a world that is already beginning to operate according to a new logic — the logic of extraordinarily rapid scientific and technological change?

The answer requires a deliberate and effective national development strategy with SECURITY at its core.

Anyone who promises economic growth and reconstruction while ignoring the central importance of security is another “prophet” pointing us toward a road whose destination we already know.

Security is not only a modern Armed Forces.

It means educating physicists, engineers and mathematicians. It means understanding our own history and holding on to our roots as a guarantee of national survival.

That is the engine that can carry us out of the desert and allow us to secure an independence purchased with blood.

Ukraine has already proved that it knows how to fight.

Now we must prove that we know how to survive — and how to win strategically.

That means learning from the mistakes of the past, turning experience into doctrine for the future, transforming technology into economic strength, turning the military into a genuine system of deterrence and making Ukrainian independence an irreversible historical reality.

We must keep moving and do everything possible so that, in the 40th year of Ukrainian independence, we can say:

“We will surely never be ashamed again, because we did not stop in the desert. …”

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