Russia wants to destroy Ukraine. Our greatest challenge isn’t past—it’s future

This discussion was initiated by Pavlo Kazarin in his column on Ukrainska Pravda. He suggested that one of the reasons for the Russian attack was that pro-Russian forces like Medvedchuk did not come to power, but instead ended up behind bars.

But does it make sense today to argue about what an alternative course of events might have been? 

"We know for certain: Russia did everything possible to ensure Poroshenko lost the election. And we remember how the Kremlin sympathized with Zelenskyy—a politician who called to "just look Putin in the eye.""

Now Russia is once again trying to change the Ukrainian government. This time, it’s Zelenskyy they are targeting. The Russians now consider him a traitor who dared to defy Putin himself. They want to destroy the state. This has become our main challenge—not the past, but the future.

We must understand: the war may last a long time. And in this reality, the state must be strong, effective, and purposeful. For this, unity is needed—in society, in politics, in governance. Unfortunately, today we see the opposite.

The Ukrainian authorities are doing almost nothing to achieve this unity. The old flaws of state governance—corruption, inefficiency, vanity, cheap PR—have not disappeared. And this is much more discouraging than theoretical scenarios of elections five years ago.

We should not be thinking about alternative histories, but about how to build a real, strong, European, and Russia-independent Ukraine. And how to win this war. Or at the very least—how to preserve the nation and the state.

Source  

About the author: Mykola Kniazhytskyi, journalist, Member of the Ukrainian Parliament.

The editorial board does not always share the views expressed by the authors of blogs or columns.