Ukraine is going through extremely serious and crushing, inhuman and ominous difficulties - especially in the last six months.
We are thinking and worrying about Ukraine,
we hope that Ukraine will survive,
we are concerned about the decline in support from the West,
we are outraged by the growing pressure on President Zelensky - not only from Russia and those who support this Orthodox Caliphate-aggressor; not only from the overwhelming neutral and indifferent majority in the world, including in Europe; but also from the West: For the adoption of the agreement "Territories in exchange for Peace".
A deal that, in my opinion, will be a kind of scam for everyone except Ukraine, according to the formula "A lot of territory and forever in exchange for Little peace and not for long."
At the same time, we must admit with a broken heart and a wounded soul that the endurance of Ukrainian society is at a critical point, after which even a collapse from despair and fatigue is not excluded.
We must admit this so that we do not have special illusions and greatly distorted ideas about reality.
It is painful to write about this, but we should not bury our heads in the sand and live with optimism that has little to do with the actual state of affairs.
Damage - physical, moral, financial, material; the loss of human lives, injuries and mutilations of varying degrees, broken families, a complete lack of understanding of how to live in the future (both for those in Ukraine and for those outside of it) - all these losses are becoming nightmarish and overwhelming, colossal and unbearable.
In populated areas not under occupation, mass events (for example, children's and youth sports competitions) are gradually being cancelled, the streets are emptying, an anxious silence reigns, because representatives of the authorities and military registration and enlistment offices are arriving everywhere, trying to send as many men as possible to fight.
Also in the unoccupied parts of Ukraine, the mood for an end to the war is growing due to the flow of "funeral notices" (notices of those killed at the front); due to the fact that disabled war veterans are increasingly encountered on the streets and in transport; due to increasingly intense bombings from Russia and due to the inevitable onset of winter frosts.
My friend's neighbor in Kharkov recently told him:
- They will make us pray for Trump and Orban, because they want to stop the war! We can no longer fight to the last Ukrainian, because even if we defeat Russia, we will live in a country that has been abandoned en masse, with the highest percentage of pensioners and women in the world...
A Ukrainian friend of mine from my student years (she is not one of my close friends, but still) writes to me:
- Every day, there is a collapse in support for continuing the war. It is one thing when someone fights there according to their will, and another when your father, your brother, your husband, your child are sent there against their will.
My friend's wife wrote to me:
- Russia has filled Ukraine with corpses of inexhaustible cannon fodder. Ukraine cannot compare with Russia in the number of soldiers, alas. We do not have hordes of stupid, drunk, brainwashed marginals and homeless people going to war for money. If in Russia, for a huge fee, women take their useless and lying under the table men to military registration and enlistment offices to be taken to war, then in Ukraine our daughters do not sell their husbands like meat. Those who were mentally and physically ready for battle have already gone into battle or were killed or were left without a leg, without an arm, without an eye or without guts.
Indeed, Ukraine is at a critical point of endurance.
Along with fatigue and exhaustion of all available and possible forces, a terrible despondency and despair are caused by a decrease in support from the West.
Until recently, Ukraine believed that the West would not allow Ukraine to lose the war.
Now more and more Ukrainians believe that the West will not allow Ukraine to continue the war.
And the West is just waiting for Ukraine to come to this conclusion itself - that the War must be stopped.
And for Ukraine to come to this conclusion, it must find itself in a situation where it cannot continue the War.
This is what my friend, almost like my brother for 50 years, from Kharkiv wrote to me:
- The West is simply waiting for us to be unable to continue the war, so that we understand that we should not continue to fight. As long as we are less and less able to fight, and inevitably, without the necessary support from the West, we will be forced to agree that we must stop fighting. And then Ukraine will be left with a maximum of half the territory and no more than one third of the population.
10/13/2024
