Chosen people in an inhospitable world

Biden opposes canceling Ukraine's MAP...White House does not consider providing Ukraine with long-range missiles...NATO lacks consensus on Vilnius Summit decisions regarding Ukraine...Transfer of combat aircraft to Ukraine is not on the agenda…

Every day we come across dozens of such news stories, and every time we boil with justified anger. It is painful to realize that tens of thousands of Ukrainians could live if the leaders of our allies did not have cockroaches dancing in their heads, which we do not understand, and new 'red lines' - absurd and immoral - were not emerging every time.

We received Western tanks six months after they could have accelerated the end of the war. We will get aircraft someday, after we break through the enemy's echeloned defense without air cover at great cost (or not).

“It will soon be a year and a half since our allies gave us three days or weeks. They admire us a little, but they are much more tired of us. We are inconvenient. At first, we did not allow our enemies to occupy us within the allotted time, and our friends to quickly mourn our bitter fate and live on as if nothing had happened. Then, for some reason, we failed to throw the world's second largest army out of our territory in a couple of months, by some magical means, and ended up in a protracted bloody war of attrition.”

We are preventing them from doing business as usual, begging for the last resources from the army depots of European 'bonsai armies', exposing their incapacity to fight, and generally creating a lot of problems for the world that could have been avoided if we had agreed to not have us in the world. But we didn't, and the world is not too happy about it.

The world is still not ready to take off its Moscow glasses, through which it sees us as some kind of strange misunderstanding. If we are awarded the Nobel Prize for the first time in history as a sign of admiration for the exploits of our heroes, it is only in the company of two 'brotherly nations.' And the one who receives this Nobel on behalf of all of us must then follow the rules of the 'decent party' that hands out prizes and grants and tell us how ugly it is to make a joke about a shark. They are ready to admit that we are currently in an 'emergency situation' (yes, no more than that - just a 'situation'), but insists that as soon as the 'situation' is over, we must return to the stable of the 'Russian world' together, otherwise we will not be able to enter the coveted Europe.

“We are sincerely recognized as David, who is fighting Goliath. But at the same time, they regulate the size of the stones in the sling and the distance we are allowed to throw them so as not to provoke Goliath to 'escalate'”

The enemies occupy every fifth meter of our land, and can bomb with impunity any corner of our country that is not covered by 'as many as four whole' batteries of Patriots,while we are forbidden to cross the Russian border even a meter - and we are grateful that at least Crimea has finally gotten rid of this 'security certificate.' We could easily bypass the Svatove-Kreminna line through the Belgorod region and collapse the LPR's rear instead of breaking through it at the cost of thousands of lives - but no, the allies are watching our every move towards the porebrik, and all we can afford are hybrid operations of the Russian Volunteer Corps (and even then with a scandal and 'investigation' when a photo of a Russian volunteer was recognized as a Belgian rifle! - a Belgian rifle), and the launch of home-made UAVs riveted together on the knee by our national drone makers.

We can go on and on about how there are no restrictions in international law on fighting on enemy territory. We can remind the allies of how their countries razed German cities to the ground and Japanese cities were incinerated by atomic fire, and how absurd it would have seemed to their governments to limit the war to their own territory; on the contrary, bringing the war to the aggressor's territory was considered a sign and at the same time a guarantee of victory.

“We have a lot of arguments, true and fair, but they all crash into one single counter-argument, unfair, dishonest, but insurmountable: we are the ones who need our allies' help, not them. This is the end of any discussion: we can remain in our right, but without ammunition, weapons, and money.”

Our enemies can be terrible monsters, they don't care who loves them or who hates them from afar. They don't care about armor, ammunition, or even filling their budgets with oil dollars. We, on the other hand, have to be holier than thou, and make sure we don't lose the shaky and capricious empathy of the 'respectable world,' and at least the clumsy support that currently keeps our frontline and our state budget going.

The world is inhospitable to us, and we are inconvenient to the world. You can get desperate, shout your pain and anger to the world, tell your allies what vile hypocritical monsters they are and how unfair their conditions and restrictions are, and then lose even the lousy support they are currently giving us and lose the war shortly after. This is hardly the right option.

Instead, we can remember that we are not the first to be in this situation, and we are not the only ones who have reason to believe that the world is unjust and unfriendly. The Jewish people have a lot to tell us, and they have a lot of bitter but victorious experiences to share.

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The same Western world condemned the Holocaust with one hand and denied the Jews the right to their own state with the other, and watched in silence as Arab countries prepared Holocaust II for the Israelis. In the early days of the state of Israel, it was not given even a fraction of the weapons that we are now being provided with. Later, when Israel first accomplished the impossible and repelled an attack from three sides simultaneously by armies comparable in size to the entire Jewish population of the Promised Land, weapons were provided. But just like now, we were always subjected to absurd conditions and restrictions, spoiling our victories by forcing compromises, and openly blackmailed by withholding aid.

“The Jews did not become angry with the world; they simply lost their illusions about it. And they rethought their place in this uncomfortable and unjust world - the place of the Chosen People, who wrest and take by force what they consider rightfully theirs. Likewise, we have a choice: to feel offended by the whole world, betrayed and oppressed by the people, or to feel like the Chosen People, who, in the trials of both enemies and allies, forge their new, higher quality.”

If we are to survive and win this war, we need to realize the experience of the State of Israel. This is the path that awaits us if we succeed in the current war. A difficult and thorny path that leads to self-sufficiency.

We should not dwell on resentment of our allies, no matter how justified. They are what they are, and they could be much worse than they are (Musk and Trump will not let you lie - and how could they...). We will not change them, just as we will not change the current world order quickly. Instead, we can quickly change what depends on us.

So, to begin with, we should remember that it was not Biden, Sullivan, Trump, or even Putin who prevented us from preparing for this war for eight years (not to mention thirty years - in fact, we had exactly that much time, not too little). And that we got into our current complete dependence on our allies not because of their evil will, but solely because of our own choice-the choice of ostriches who did not want to see the inevitability of a war for survival and kept their heads in the sand until the first arrivals in Kyiv.

“And while getting rid of illusions about this world order will definitely be part of the lesson we learn from this war, it is much more important that we do not fall into the illusion of our innocence and infallibility and learn the right lessons about ourselves.”

And the main lesson of these lessons should be to rely solely on our own strength and the need to become as self-sufficient as possible after the war - in everything from food and finance to culture and technology, but, first and foremost, of course, in defense.

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This is not a call for isolation; the path of Eritrea or North Korea is hardly a path of success. On the contrary, we have to find our place in today's global world, and at the same time, in this world, get rid of dependence on foreign aid. Israel's experience shows that this is possible.

Of course, we should aspire to the EU. In the long term, because we have to become part of the Global West, the European Civilization, and in the time of clash of different civilizations, we should not frantically search for our place, but take it in advance. And in the short term, because the EU structural and equalization funds should become one of the main sources of investment in postwar Ukraine. And, of course, Ukraine should integrate into the EU not in an Orban-like, purely imitative way, but in a real way, from being integrated into pan-European production chains and occupying specific niches in the single market, to the introduction of the euro instead of the hryvnia in the future.

But at the same time, we must always keep in mind the situation in which the EU suddenly becomes unstable and collapses - whether it is due to another pandemic, climate change, or populist pressure. We need to know that in such a situation, we will have a sufficient financial cushion for at least a year or two, and alternative markets for our main products.

And most importantly, we must have not only fragments of production chains with their beginnings and ends far away from Ukraine, but complete production facilities for all the most necessary products, from cars to gadgets. Yes, in 'good times' they may be mainly export-oriented, but in the event of a crisis, we must have all the necessary elements to quickly close production cycles. We can (and will) successfully develop agricultural exports, but in the event of a crisis, we must know for sure that we may be left without bananas and avocados, but we are guaranteed to have potatoes, bread, and meat.

And of course, what was said about potatoes and gadgets is even more relevant to defense production.

By all means, we have to go to NATO as the only effective defense mechanism in the modern world.

“The NATO umbrella will allow us to exhale a little and spend on defense within three percent of GDP, not thirty percent. But we have to be prepared for the worst, from the fact that we may not be accepted there, to the fact that some Trumps will at some point break up the Alliance, without asking our opinion, of course.”

Therefore, along with integration into the Alliance, we must first of all focus on our own defense industry - compatible with all NATO standards, full of the most advanced technologies, but at the same time completely self-sufficient, and ready to provide our army with weapons, equipment and munitions in full, even if we suddenly found ourselves under sanctions from all sides.

How is this done? Israel, South Africa, and South Korea in the 1970s and 80s, and more recently, in the 21st century, Turkey and Poland have demonstrated how to achieve this. In times of warm international relations, it is not ready-made weapons and equipment that are purchased from allies, but production licenses and production lines, and each defense order should contain an increasing percentage of localization. And then, if relations suddenly deteriorate, the 'wise advice' of the allies can be relied upon, knowing that everything we need for a big war is produced at home.

The same applies to the army - its training should include all the useful elements of NATO standards, but its structure, armament, and most importantly, the training of its personnel reserve should be based not only on operations within the Alliance, but, first and foremost, on the readiness to repel an invasion comparable to the maximum offensive capabilities of a potential aggressor country at any time without any external assistance. And then we will be able not only not to think about what cockroaches inhabit the head of the next old man with dementia across the ocean, but even not to know the names of that next old man and his advisors.

“Finally, it is worth remembering another Israeli experience. After the Budapest deception and the current war, we have every right to possess the very weapons that the Russians have that are driving our cowardly allies into the biggest corner.”

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But it is obvious that no one will ever give or sell it to us - we, the s**kers who gave up the world's second nuclear arsenal for a piece of paper, will be prevented in every way from replacing even a small fraction of the warheads that were once taken away from us. But Israel also solved this problem, and not with the good graces of its Western allies. Years of secret hard work - and now the State of Israel is openly mocking, saying that it “does not have nuclear weapons, but will use them if necessary.” We must work to ensure that one day we can say the same.

We are uncomfortable, stubborn autochthons, natives, ready to die heroically for our land, our rights and freedoms. But the time is approaching to reach the next stage - a self-sufficient nation that is always ready to defend itself so that heroism and self-sacrifice are simply not needed, and the help of allies is a pleasant bonus, not a matter of survival. The path of a fully self-sufficient Chosen People is not easy. But it is the only way to victory, and only it will lead us to a safe and happy future.

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About the author. Yevhen Dykyi, scientist, military officer.

The editors don't always share the opinions expressed by the authors of the blogs.