Translated material
Return home. How Ukraine turns into a European state
After Euromaidan every year of Ukrainian events is ten.
In December 2014, the country still lived anxious military expectations, and observers were amazed at the preserved unity in power and in the ruling coalition, and in general public unity, when everything is at the same time: politicians, officials, oligarchs, ordinary citizens.
In December 2015, the war-although the conflict in the Donbass and far from the end and part of the territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions is still not controlled by the Ukrainian authorities-has gone somewhere to the background, and public unity again became a touching memory, giving way to the usual confrontation of all against all, situational unions, the conflicts of power and oligarchs, the competition of political forces and the public distrust of power.
It may seem that in the year Ukraine has become another country, even moved away from the achievements that became the culmination of the protest movement of 2013-2014, the legendary Maidan. But in fact, we are present with very rapid social and political development - so fast, so rapid, so unexpected and difficult for the process participants themselves that they do not even have time to take a breath and understand what really happens to them. Simply put, Ukraine is trying to catch up with neighboring ones - and so close to it from a civilizational point of view - the country of Central Europe and is more and more moved away from Russia, with which it has been united for several centuries. But what really does this return home mean?
The Russian vector has forever disappeared from the Ukrainian agenda due to primarily the efforts of the Kremlin itself
We will try to compare three December - 2013, 2014, 2015. December 2013 is still a Maidan, the very beginning of the Maidan, New Year and Christmas in the circle of like-minded people who dreamed of the collapse of the Kleptocratic regime of Viktor Yanukovych and the appearance of new, European Ukraine. But qualitatively, Ukraine of December 2013 was still a country without a clear awareness of its development vector and a single political nation that could give an impetus to this development. If this nation was formed during the Maidan, then exclusively within the boundaries of the western and central regions of the country, from where the main number of participants in the protest movement arrived in Kyiv. And although we saw Ukrainian flags with the inscriptions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Sevastopol and Mariupol from the Maidan stage, we perfectly understood that the number of supporters of the protest movement in the east and south of the country is significantly inferior to supporters of European democratic development in the West and in the center.
The flight to Russia of Viktor Yanukovych, the annexation of Crimea and the war in the Donbass became turning points in the formation of the Unified Ukrainian Political Nation, which first appeared in all regions of the country for the first time in the history of independent Ukraine. Against the background of the loss of territory, victories and defeats, the deaths of loved ones, the appearance of hundreds of thousands of forced immigrants from the Crimea and Donbass, the understanding of the common fate and the common tasks of the country's development as an integral part of European civilization has matured, despite the fact that the Russian vector has forever disappeared from the Ukrainian agenda due to the efforts of the Kremlin itself. And by December 2014, we could amazingly observe not only the appearance, but also the functioning of this new Ukrainian political nation, which went through general tests and demonstrated miracles of understanding and solidarity.
But the political nation is not a host of angels. This is just a political nation. And one could easily foresee that a decrease in military danger and an increase in social problems would demonstrate the quality of this nation and the complexity of its further development.
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