We are responsible not only for what we do, but also for what we don’t do. They say this sentence belongs to Confucius. Whatever the case may be, but this opinion of the famous Chinese philosopher came to my mind when on November 11 I read what Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko wrote on Twitter: I want to stop the war. Not allow anyone start a third global madness. And further: Today in the east we are defending the territorial integrity of Ukraine, and we will always defend out motherland and our right to independence and development. However, I believe in peaceful regulation and consider myself obliged to do everything for peaceful life to come to Ukraine.
Questions to Petro Poroshenko: a) is it a war or an anti-terrorist operation in Ukraine? (“I want to stop the war”); b) how should we interpret “I believe in peaceful regulation”? (“we are defending the territorial integrity of Ukraine”); c) how should we interpret “consider myself obliged to do everything for peaceful life to come to Ukraine?”
On November 13, Petro Poroshenko addressed the special OSCE monitoring mission with the following:
“We have to unite all of our efforts with the entire world in order to prevent war there (in Donbas – ed.), and more exactly, to stop the war.” What is he talking about: “prevent war” or “stop” it? The matter is not the style but the logic of the facts. It is not enough to want to stop the war and believe in peaceful regulation. He needs not general words or mottos, but concrete action.
“You are a smart diplomat and know very well that you are leading the war against the Kremlin, so why don’t you call it war?” Asks politician, former political prisoner Levko Lukyanenko. “You are afraid of legitimizing war – which was already made legal by the Russian parliament – and give Moscow reason to use aviation against Ukraine? The politics of cowardice never stopped aggressors.”
“This is not an ATO but war for independence, a moment of renaissance, educating the nation,” American journalist Serhiy Loyko concludes after spending four days among the Ukrainian ‘cyborgs,’ the courageous defenders of Donetsk airport.
“We have to state our ultimatum – those who refuse to put down arms and continue killing, starving people and murdering them with cold, infringe on Ukraine’s territorial integrity, will be destroyed,” Leonid Kravchuk and Viktor Yushchenko stated recently.
The conclusions are correct. But it seems that the Ukrainian government, while balancing between its own business interests, war and peace, has lost its grip on the country.
“The government is speaking a common language with the thieves from Chernovetsky’s team, the head of the Donetsk Lux gang, the bastards from the former Party of Regions – some are towed to the parliament, some are supported in business, but they do not want to talk to the people. All the while the government’s disastrous mistakes bordering on betrayal of national interests, necessitate public acknowledgement and explanation” (Kostyantyn Ivanchenko, Argument).
Borys Filatov, deputy head of the Dnipropetrovsk OSA, is convinced that “Petro Olexiyovich did not learn the lesson of 2005, believes in peace with bastards, but is ashamed of patriots.”
And so? Minister of Foreign Affairs Pavlo Klimkin stated that the Ukrainian government refuses to fight for the temporarily terrorist-occupied territories in the east of Ukraine in a comment to German newspaper Rheinische Post. Shall we stay silent?
“If we are talking about the government, we should speak about the President of Ukraine. He does not only fail to notice that people are dying (formally, of course, he sees all this and understands it, but we are talking about legal and other consequences and reactions), he does not notice what Ukrainian law demands… Poroshenko cannot rise above the logic and motivation of a businessman’s behavior… There is no political solution to the conflict in Donbas. We have to either reject this territory or continue fighting for it.” This is the opinion of the former Consul General of Ukraine in Türkiye Bohdan Yaremenko.
The economic and defense situation in the country needs assertive, well-coordinated action. Everybody wrote about the weak human resource policies of the Ukrainian President.
Yury Kasyanov, one of the organizers of Armiya-SOS movement told censor.net in an interview that people like Heletey and Muzhenko are the President’s fatal error. “Petro Olexiyovich already lost three-quarters of the people’s trust and lost two oblasts of Ukraine, just for his own personal peace of mind… He is afraid of Putin, his army. He is scared of not having gas. The West’s support. He is concerned with his factory in Lipetsk… He is afraid of volunteer battalions.”
Within half a year, the hryvnia fell by half. Small and average businesses are falling apart, the thin layer of the middle class is waning.
“The person in charge of the NBU is definitely not in their place” (Serhiy Teryokhin, former Minister of Finance). “If the NBU is not headed by a smart person who knows what to do, it will only get worse” (Oleksandr Savcehnko, Dean of the International Business Institute).
How to find a way out of the situation volunteer Yury Kasyanov characterized openly: “Fair war for independence that brought the best people, patriots of Ukraine, under its banner, is turning into a mad farce, a bloody theatrical production with pointless talks, pointless elections, former ‘good friends,’ unsinkable regionals and more than bizarre debts before the aggressor country”?
There are no simple solutions in politics. Especially when we are talking about military strategies, the art of winning. The army needs patriotic commanders who are able to give direct and correct orders, it needs effective rear supplies. But not just that. “The army as an element of the state is an organized multitude of people who systematically prepare for victory and for it, to the extent of dying or killing in the name of the state’s goal. This is what defines its dignity and its tragic nature. The army can only exist to the extent to which it is inspired by the state-patriotic lawful consciousness” (Ivan Ilyin, Russian philosopher).
The government should be the first to have state-patriotic consciousness. Otherwise – defeat. On all fronts.
