At first the threat came from a wrongly chosen path. We went not to the place we were invited to but to the place where there is peace for one and a customary life for old-age pensioners. Then riot police units suddenly emerged from an unlawful field and thickened the clouds. The regime’s guardians, wearing the tabs of a bird of prey that resembled a Reichsadler, as the Nazis used to call it, bashed youngsters and messed everything up. The people understood that the threat was coming not from the backward movement but from the law-enforcement bodies that were subordinate to nobody but acted clearly on someone’s orders. All the folks came out to defend themselves and were surprised. It turned out there were millions of those who worried about their country and their own life. The concurrence of circumstances and people’s sentiments triggered a still greater surprise on the opposite side. The latter immediately saw the danger that was coming from the uncontrolled citizens who became aware of what was in store for them.
The tops decided to field similar crowds on their side to achieve military and political parity. Those who wished to back the government for 200 hryvnias and those who wanted to topple it free of charge gathered in Kyiv, provoking a dangerous political and criminal situation. Patriots, extremists, provocateurs, and sadists found themselves in the same line of synonyms. Unaware at the moment of where the threat to peace was coming from and seeing no difference between the protesters and the law enforcers, the West would say “whoa” to both sides. The East, which had always alleged that the threat to peace was coming from the West, hastily opened visible and invisible battlefields against Europe, Americans, Jews, gays, Banderaites, Kyivites, Lviv residents, and other Maidan protesters, calling them fascists for the sake of brevity. The East’s actions resulted in the expansion of the conflict zone. The protests, which had originated in downtown Kyiv, spread over the entire city and country and finally turned into a classical theater of war known since the time when Natasha Rostova and Andrei Bolkonsky danced.
One empire took on another, as it was in 1812, 1914, and 1941. By tradition, we found ourselves in the middle. The East is sure the threat is coming from us, while the West does not doubt that the blame lies with Putin only. For a western viewer, Ukraine is like a prism – he looks at us but sees Moscow. This is why we have fallen out of sight. As long as the Greek Olympic flame is burning, we are very unlikely to become the hotbed of a worldwide conflagration, as some big Russian global conflict theoreticians predict. Of an entirely different opinion are practitioners of overseas hot spots, who are hinting at major nuisances before the very nose of the EU. By analogy with the world of birds of prey, the situation can be described as follows. Russian falcons are flying above Ukrainian golden eagles, watched by European eagles and US hawks, while the vultures of all the continents’ corporations are soaring high above them all, waiting for a meal that has no national origin.
The threat that comes from all the flying predators looks like a truce from below because nobody is really pecking anybody – even the golden eagles have calmed down [an allusion to Berkut – “golden eagle” – the Ukrainian riot police. – Ed.] for want of a free lure. But temporary peace on the hunting expanses does not mean the end to all fears. On the contrary, the number and variety of threats is increasing and moving in different directions. They are no longer coming from two front lines only. The views of those who fight under different flags are gradually focusing on the president as inspirer and organizer of all the current troubles for all the Ukrainian classes. But the West and the East are no longer focusing their attention on him, as their “economic generals” stand crouched over their geopolitical maps, planning to rescue, conquer, and subjugate Ukraine to a new order. The nature of this order is still be finalized, but it is clearly inevitable.
Let us not guess what ways out of the super-crisis the Brussels-Washington-Moscow triangle will decide on. The point is that Kyiv is so far unable to outline its goals. The greediness and stupidity of the authorities has caused the state to lose its prestige. This country is not being taken seriously on the official level, but the voice of the people is heard very well. But nobody, except for Eastern and Western intellectuals, finds joy in hearing this voice. For all the others, popular unrest without a political process poses a threat. The East fears that the virus of democracy may spread over the one sixth of the global land. The West is fearful of an Egyptian-style farewell to dictatorship, which will be followed by chaos. All are in bewilderment, scratching the backs or their heads, feeling in their pockets, and estimating the expense of quenching the Ukrainian passions.
The point of trench warfare is to stop active hostilities in order to regroup forces and devise new tactics. While the law enforcers are quietly twisting the arms of the arrested and the debate on various versions of the Constitution has assumed the scale of a sport movement, the two sides’ propaganda machines continue to work. To scare means to win. An incredibly large number of real and concocted fears have occupied, like a vast minefield, the whole living space. No matter where this country’s citizen lives, what he does, and what he believes in, he is bound to be blown up by these mines of horror. On a large scale, we are all in for collapses, inflations, interventions, and occupations. On a small scale, it is a customary corruption, brazen-faced policemen, crazy bosses, and a rotten system of administration.
On the other hand, the number of the forecast disasters does not result in the multiplicity of fears. Does it really matter where they will find you? Should you escape a hit with a baton on the head or an arrest by the ruling of a corrupt court, you will still be struck by delayed wages, prohibitive taxes, high prices, and other instruments of an unprofessional government that represents an increasingly grave danger to society. It is the authorities which the main threat to peace in the country is coming from today. It is like a modern-day man who tries to put on the armor of his short medieval ancestor – he will not do so without pain and injuries. The Ukrainian governing institutions are loath to change in form and in content, turning from what once was protective armor into an instrument of torture. We cry out: “It won’t come!” but the armor is still being pulled on.
However, forcing big people into small cages is not the quintessence of a moment. The main thing is that everybody – within and outside Ukraine’s borders – is now aware of the source of danger. The threat is coming from a system that does not respond to the challenges of time. Neither the people nor the friends in the West and the East need a system like this. Whether some microchips and circuits or all the units will be replaced is a question of time and cost. Time will tell. There is a good reason and sign for this optimism. Formerly, in the era of never-ending crises in our ill-fated system, people used to sweep essential goods off the shop shelves. The upsurge of mass-scale demand for “matches, salt, and cereals” meant the comeback of the old phobias and the emergence of representatives of the new authorities, who had been brought up inside the previous system. There are very few shoppers now. Maybe, people have been totally fleeced or they perhaps understand that the stocks of macaroni will not save them from eking an existence. But, in both cases, the aspiration to change everything is much stronger than the wish to leave things as they are.
