Writing an essay these days. The first part of it will hardly be edited in a major way and can be shared standalone. The first paragraph reads:
Ukraine? Or Russia? Who is (more) culpable for the incensed scrimmage of the neighbors, essentially two kindred peoples? Are there any third parties partaking in the culpability? Is there an overarching ideological or civilizational clash resounding? Is it purely about human plane or there might be a bigger preternatural drama unfolding behind what meets the eye? A former Ukrainian national, currently Russian citizen, but, most importantly, human being in the quest for a higher truth, I am going to present my personal take on the standoff between my former and current motherlands. In all this, I will be equipped, as per my lights, with some common sense and reasoning skills, lots of evidence from those on the ground, tons of 'media chaff' sifted through for the grains of truth, some general knowledge, some more specific, including Jungian ideas, and a number of spiritual insights, personal and otherwise, pertaining to the events. And just for starters: I do understand the reasons behind Russia's “unmotivated invasion” into Ukraine in February 2022. If my reader is patient enough – those too impatient and entrenched can hardly be my target audience anyways – my perspective might unroll before his or her eyes as a meticulously woven and, perhaps, somewhat intricate tapestry. It is, of course, up to the reader then to decide whether to put it to any good use.
The second part is underway with Jung and all. A teaser of sorts:
According to Jung, as paraphrased and somewhat 'jazzed up' by me, human psyche (further on “psyche”) doesn't just 'hang out in the air' but has a predestination of sorts, an inner calling or pull as coming from the archetype of Self that can be loosely compared to the image of God in the Christian tradition. The progression towards this Self and coming on close terms with it was called by Jung as “individuation”.
It has to be noted that psyche, all per the rules of the 'Game', has the right to take a pass on this deeper calling and be content with whatever 'smaller fish' out there in relatively 'shallow waters', drifting more like horizontally than inwardly. In a sense, this is the state of a 'normal', unpretentious existence. It seems capable of changing its direction unless too entrenched.
There is also a freedom, for better or worse, to go in pretty much opposite direction, ending up being possessed by the devil, or devilishness for that matter, if self-aware personified evil sounds too much with some.
To recap, humans are free to go down three major 'tracts' with whatever dynamics ensuing from this, but only one of the three can fulfill one's destiny in earnest and, perhaps, as importantly, with the most pleasurable, or least unsavory, afterlife experiences. (Rest)
...Suppose, the inward progression or individuation is there. Essentially, it will mean the harmonization of reasoning, emotions, intuition and physique in such a 'configuration' for any given individual which would lead to his or her greatest fulfillment and ennoblement. To put it differently, the primacy of the Spirit over the said layers or aspects of one's being will be manifesting in the least abrasive, most meaningful and most gracious way across all these.
In more practical terms, it is as simple, and so too hard, as taking up different roles in life (e.g. that of a child, a student, a spouse, a parent, an expert, a citizen, a ruler, a warrior, a sage, etc.) with their associated joys and/or responsibilities, along with spontaneous spiritual experiences leading to the 'absorption' of whatever is there to absorb from the realm of the unconscious, the Divine part of it, be that leveled-up cognition, sublime feelings, deep and intense emotions, or certain bodily states, all propelling one to a yet greater fulfillment.
With all that, a certain mindset ought to be developing, characterized with honesty, alertness and courage from the one side and humility and grace from the other, leading to, or emanating from, correct ideas about the Divine Principle, about life, about oneself. Honesty and courage will also be much needed in facing one's “shadow” (to be discussed later) and incorporating it into his or her conscious mind so that it could break free from its unconscious adversarial effects.
Pretty much all states and qualities can be mapped along two basic psychological drives at that: the drive for autonomy (“being”, masculine principle, “yang”, “rajas”) will be checked and balanced with the drive for belonging (non-being, feminine principle, “ying”, “tamas”). 'In-between', overlapping with and informing them of spirituality, essentially the higher nobility, while streaming in its own course, will be the pull towards Self.
If somebody has issues reading the pdf version, here's the plain text:
Ukraine? Or Russia? Who is (more) culpable for the incensed scrimmage of the neighbors, essentially two kindred peoples? Are there any third parties partaking in the culpability? Is there an overarching ideological or civilizational clash resounding? Is it purely about human plane or there might be a bigger preternatural drama unfolding behind what meets the eye? A former Ukrainian national, currently Russian citizen, but, most importantly, human being in the quest for a higher truth, I am going to present my personal take on the standoff between my former and current motherlands. In all this, I will be equipped, as per my lights, with some common sense and reasoning skills, lots of evidence from those on the ground, tons of 'media chaff' sifted through for the grains of truth, some general knowledge, some more specific, including Jungian ideas, and a number of spiritual insights, personal and otherwise, pertaining to the events. And just for starters: I do understand the reasons behind Russia's “unmotivated invasion” into Ukraine in February 2022. If my reader is patient enough – those too impatient and entrenched can hardly be my target audience anyways – my perspective might unroll before his or her eyes as a meticulously woven and, perhaps, somewhat intricate tapestry. It is, of course, up to the reader then to decide whether to put it to any good use.
For those who are staying with me, I shall begin with my brief autobiography, complemented with the 'exegesis' on what was happening outside of my immediate circle yet close enough to be passing through my heart and feeding my thought, both geared towards the main topic of this piece.
I was born in the Soviet Union, more precisely in Crimea that was to become the southernmost and somewhat autonomous 'annex' to the independent Ukraine seven years later (geographically, Crimean peninsula was connected to the Ukrainian mainland through a narrow neck of land, hence 'annex'). I lived in Crimea for some seventeen years before going for university to Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, and willy-nilly receive the degree I did. I didn't settle down in Kiev though. Instead, I came back to my hometown and stayed there for another three or four years before setting out for more distant lands this time: my next school awaited me in Canada, all thanks to my parents' money and their enamourment with the West, as well as to my adventurous spirit and some clear promptings that I got... never mind.
Fast-forwarding to 2013, while still in Canada I grew highly skeptical of the uprising and social unrest roiling in Ukraine, the so-called Euromaidan, and the coup that soon followed it. A new pro-West Ukrainian government, Ukrainian nationalists having its back, emerged on the scene, its legitimacy far from enshrined by a larger societal agreement, not by the southeast of Ukraine at the least (Crimea included).
In March 2014, I found myself peeking at the newspaper of another passenger on a subway train, its title reading “Gunpoint Referendum in the Crimea” or something along these lines. Perhaps, worth a mention is my being blissed out for several days on end, to my own surprise, upon the 'annexation' of Crimea, or its reunion as seen by the Crimeans and Russians. It seemed that my 'Crimeanness' was more integral to me than I could have expected or, perhaps, this very pure reaction had come from yet deeper parts of my being.
In 2015, I came back to Crimea, now a part of Russia, and took Russian citizenship. Have been officially Russian ever since. (Rest)
...The 'exegesis'. Needless to say that I kept a close eye on what was going in Ukraine all along. By then the so-called Anti-Terrorist Operation (the ATO) against the Donbass “insurgents” (the actual death toll was the highest for the civilians), essentially Eastern Ukrainians, had been launched by the new Ukrainian government. Other 'exploits' too were in full swing in the country, including people being imprisoned, tortured and burned alive (e.g. the Odessa massacre on May 2, 2014) just for their pro-Russia stances and sentiments. Rape and pillage of the civilians in the zone of the ATO by paramilitary ultra-right Ukrainian formations was common and apparently winked at by Ukrainian chief military commanders. A 'fun' fact: some Ukrainian militaries on the ground were so appalled with the doings of their ultra-right 'comrades-in-arms' that they would spill deployment positions of the latter to artillery crews on the other side of the barricade.
To be fair, not always the 'insurgents' showed their... noble side, so to say, some of them being outright criminals and psychos. Still in terms magnitude of evilness, their misdoings would pale in comparison to those of the Ukrainian nationalists, if such a measurement can be undertaken. It can be safely asserted, all things considered, that 'Russian-friendly' or neutral Ukrainians were, and still are, well, just normal human beings with their rights and wrongs, ups and downs, virtues and vices, with hardly any of them driven with a zealotic, petty-minded ideology magnifying 'the normally distributed' hatred and indecency, as it were. In their normality, these people didn't wish to accept 'heroes' like Stepan Bandera who had orchestrated inhumane killings of thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians, now an icon of the new Ukraine. In their normality, they abhorred the slogan “Ukraine for Ukrainians” and the like seeing it as essentially backward and fascist, especially considering their anti-fascist and multi-ethnic Soviet past, and now such slogans were on the lips of everyone and their sister in Kiev. In their normality, they didn't want a closer and legally binding association with the European Union with its ultra-liberal values from the one side and inevitable structural adjustments to Ukrainian industry from the other, Bulgaria and some other Eastern European countries, the most recent members of the EU, being far from shining examples of prosperity. In their normality, they were appalled at the idea that some day Ukraine might become a NATO member – nobody could have guaranteed the opposite – with its missiles deployed right at the borders of their historical and spiritual motherland. Weren't these the signs of sanity on their part? All that said, were there any moral, ideological or purely practical reasons for those in the southeast of Ukraine to embrace the new Ukrainian authorities, which hadn't been chosen by them in the first place, except for the pleasure of traveling to the EU without a visa? For one thing, such a trade-off would have been much below their human dignity.
Be that as it might, the ATO with its ebbs and flows had been never called off, not in practical terms at the least, by the Ukrainian government right until February 2022 when it simply gave way to a new, more large-scale round of confrontation. Clearly, from the spring of 2014 to the winter of 2022 there had been a civil war going in Ukraine, each side supported by a greater power. (Rest)
...When the Russian army rolled in Ukraine almost reaching Kiev in March 2022, at least two immediate events precipitated this. First, Russian authorities had failed to warrant the non-expansion of the NATO, their call to the rollback of the NATO to its 1991 borders also ignored. It can be safely assumed that had the US leaders found themselves in a similar position with a nuke-armed military bloc advancing towards the US borders, they would have been very outspoken about its security to say the least. Second, there had been a massive attack on the Donbass on the part of Ukrainian military, its shells and missiles targeting, as they had normally done, civil areas. These events standalone should be smashing the “unmotivated invasion” version into smithereens.
Judging by the structure and relatively poor preparedness of the Russian army to a full-scale military standoff, as well as the Russian society being far from war-mongered as of the start of the Special Military Operation – had I been an insidious and nefarious Russian ruler, I would have taken care of all this well in advance – the original plan of Russian authorities was, apparently, to simply show off power and have Ukraine give up on the long-suffering Donbass, as well as any of its claims to Crimea. Military neutrality of Ukraine, giving more freedom to Russian culture and prohibition of the neo-Nazi ideology was another part of the deal. At least, all this was being negotiated between the parties as of March 2022 when some third ones intervened, essentially the West, and got Ukraine to back down on whatever agreements reached. This very pattern was to reiterate in the next round of the negotiations a few months later. That's basically how the Special Military Operation launched by Russian authorities has strayed away from the intended route, with Russia 'bogging down' in Ukraine and claiming along more and more of its land.
About savagery, or 'savagery', of the Russian military. At least as far as top Russian military leadership was, and still is, concerned, there was no, and neither is, any embitterment or cynical, coldblooded calculation on its part – after all, Russian military commanders see Ukrainians as a kindred people – that would translate into things like Bucha and Irpen in 2022. For one thing, much later, in July 2024, a Czech mercenary that fought for the Ukrainian armed forces in March-April 2022, will have been tried in the capital of his country for war crimes, including the killings of the civilians, all shoulder to shoulder with his fellow-soldiers, in the sadly remembered Ukrainian townships. This outlook on the events as coming from the West itself, will have been much at odds with its mainstream version holding the Russians as the culprit.
Coming back to 2022, the plan of the Russian military commanders, apparently, was to 'tiptoe' with Ukrainian civilians, and Ukrainian military for that matter (as far as this could get), all to 'win their hearts' for whatever humanitarian and practical purposes. As for the Russian military on the ground, it was very much in sync with the commanders in this regard and for pretty much same reasons. To put it differently, Russian soldiers were, and are, no different in their humanity from, say, the Donbass insurgents, just normal human beings with whatever unfortunate outliers in the 'bell curve', criminals and psychos that is. For one thing, when the first round of the negotiations failed, and new chunks of Ukrainian land, Kherson region and part of Zaporozhye, were soon claimed by Russia, what the locals experienced there as the aftermath – the majority of them embraced Russia, and the rest was free to go to Ukraine without any hindrances on the part of Russian authorities – was nowhere near the treatment that the residents of Kursk region in Russia will have received in August 2024 on the part of the Ukraine military, with lootings, humiliations, forced detentions, and killings of the people going at full throttle.
It is October 2024 now. My 'extended' autobiography is stopping here, only to go into another retrospective spiral a few sections away. (Rest)
...In writing all this, I presume that not so many people busy with their daily rounds thousands of kilometers away from the scene, have had an opportunity to familiarize themselves with some important in-betweens and outs of the conflict, like what it essentially means to be Ukrainian for Eastern and Western Ukrainians (the geographical divide is rather loose). Well, I have laid this trouble upon myself, for this distinction, apart from all other considerations to be discussed later in varying degrees, is key to understanding not only the civil war in Ukraine of late years but also the current hostilities much as its 'sequel'. Some of the details have already transpired, so I will just supply the rest.
For many those in the east, south and much of the center of Ukraine, or what used to be Ukrainian territory up until recently, to be Ukrainian is (or used to be) much about being embedded in the Soviet past and the “Russian World” in general, with whatever good and bad to it, while retaining certain ethnic and temperamental distinctions. Say, Ukrainians have been known in their 'extended' Russian family for their emotionality or being more 'on the heart' side, for better or worse. There is even a joke (no offense intended) that once a Ukrainian takes to logic, he becomes Russian.
Ukrainian identity as hailing mostly from the west of Ukraine is obviously a different kettle of fish with more nationalistic undertones or outright Nazi or neo-Nazi coloration. Apparently, there is a number of ultra-right groups out there differing in their stance towards the primacy of Ukrainian language and ethnic purity, in religious beliefs, in the degree of antisemitism, or say, in their take on Western ultra-liberal values. What all of them have in common though is flagrant intolerance to pretty much anything pertaining to Russia, and this had been the case much before February 2022 or March 2014.
And here's again a major contention of mine: Ukrainians associating themselves with the Russian World, and Russians for that matter, are much better off in their general humanity and sanity than those espousing and practicing nationalism, more like its neo-Nazist variation. I do contend that it has never been a magnifying glass for virtues of its bearers but, quite the opposite, for their wickedness, of which I have already provided some examples featuring uncalled-for, inhuman cruelty.
It is not just about cruelty though – it is about losing whatever humane there is to lose. It appears to be a psychic infection of sorts that had spread in Ukrainian society far beyond its most hard-boiled nationalistic nucleus much in advance of the Special Military Operation. Sticking in my memory here is what surrounded the Odessa massacre in 2014 when pro-Russia activists were burned alive. Namely, there was a lot of derision in the Ukrainian media landscape about “potato beetles” nicely roasted (the activists wore Georgian ribbons having black and orange stripes that resembled the coloration of the beetles). Alas, this is just one in a barrage of examples of how Ukrainian collective consciousness came to be desensitized and debased, largely 'thanks to' the nationalistic ideology holding it in its clutches. I will be busy probing into this uncanny 'embrace' for some time now. (Rest)
...Obviously, Ukrainian nationalism has a history to it. Digging deeper into it should be all the more edifying as, apart from some curious but very context-specific details, this will help me raise more universally meaningful themes like good and evil, which will certainly add more dimensions to whatever being laid out.
For now, just to make it more personable, I will share some of my first-hand random and hardly bearing impressions and experiences of Ukrainian nationalism in my youth, a waft off the 'flowers' that were to blossom somewhat later in the conflagrated Ukraine and a distant echo of much earlier events that I familiarized myself with in earnest only in my late 20's and early 30's. This somewhat belated research of mine, highly compressed, will come on the heels of my immediate recollections.
Growing up in Crimea after 1991, the year Ukraine got its independence in its borders of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic with Crimea in tow, I always felt some apprehension about my new country. It was just in the air but I couldn't really put my finger to it. Actually, something once happened that helped to shape this apprehension up. One day, an inspector from the education department was visiting my school. He had come from the mainland Ukraine, and the hearsay had it that he was a very 'Ukraine-spirited' fellow. Once in school, he attended a few classes, basically pitching Ukrainian language and Ukraine as it was to the pupils. It was then all over school that during one of those pitches he had stepped on the foot of a young pupil sitting in the first row, and, no matter the attempts of the latter to release it, the inspector never budged and just went on and on.
One way or another, from the bits and pieces I picked here and there I could conclude that some Ukrainian nationalists out there, in the mainland, weren't particularly friendly towards Russians, and the Crimeans in particular, just for the fact of many of them being Russians or pro-Russia no matter their personality or deeds. For one thing, when I rented a room in a flat in Kiev, a neighbor lady apparently didn't fancy my Crimean origins once they transpired. My landlady told me later that the neighbor was a Ukrainian nationalist, hence her being cold with me. Well, it was odd but I couldn't care less about my being disliked by some neighbor – after all, it didn't translate into something more menacing than wry glances or sullen silence in the elevator from her end.
Fast-forwarding to my stay in Canada, I was told a curious story by a Russian acquaintance pretty soon after my arrival. She used to be friends with a girl from the Ukrainian community and, according to her, they really got along... right until the moment when other Ukrainians found out about their friendship. The girl got an earful from them for taking up with a Russian. Sure enough, my Russian acquaintance and the Ukrainian girl parted their ways over their ethnic 'incompatibility', the latter having the upper hand in this.
Still in Canada a few years later, I worked for a landscaping company laying sod and doing other landscape-changing acts as a general laborer. A coworker of mine was Canadian of the Western European origins. Once in our conversation he referred to Canadian Ukrainians as to “backward” without any call from my end and any further elaboration on his. It must have been the year 2015, and by then I had already done some research, on top of my more or less scrappy impressions, into what this backwardness actually signified apart from mere disliking or hating someone for his or her association with Russia. I am about to share my findings as coming below. (Rest)
...The reader, if he or she is still with me being unaware of all the backstory at that, would be curios to find out that the cradle of Ukrainian nationalism is a relatively small westernmost part of the contemporary Ukraine that, over the last several centuries, had changed hands of different 'masters', including Poland (in its different incarnations), Austria (in its different materializations), the Nazi Germany (for a brief yet momentous period), and the Soviet Russia. For convenience's sake, this land can well be called “the nucleus Ukraine” and its inhabitants – “the nucleus Ukrainians”.
Apparently, being pushed back and forth wasn't a nice thing to experience on the part of the people. Of a note is the fact that of all the 'masters', perhaps, only the Russians didn't look down on the nucleus Ukrainians as on ethnic or racial inferiors, which, of course, didn't prevent the latter from experiencing the 'pleasantries' of Stalin's rule for one, all on equal terms with their Russian fellow sufferers (if that is of some comfort).
The reason I am bringing this up, in terms of historical grudges over the last several centuries, Russians had by no means been worse off for the nucleus Ukrainians than, say, Poles. It just happened so that the Soviet experience with its forced collectivization, deportations and other adversaries stayed the freshest in their memory. To the point, over scores of years these memories came to be somewhat... confabulated, that is, deliberately boosted and colored up here and there. Say, so-called “Holodomor” was mispresented as an attempt of the Soviets to famish ethnic Ukrainians, unlike a much more complex malefaction and tragedy. For one thing, this famine had barely touched the nucleus Ukrainians.
One way or another, in the 1930's the most nationalistically minded ones in the nucleus Ukraine came to equally hate Russians and Poles along with Jews (have never investigated where this antisemitism had come from, must have been a 'borrowed' thing from some of the 'masters'). This hatred wasn't long to flesh out in sweeping and equally cruel killings, with mostly civilians targeted. I would rather not go into the gore part of this sparing the reader of horrifying details. Suffice it to say that even German Nazis, their then masters, were appalled with the brutality of the minions.
Apparently, there had been, or have been, some better-off masters as per their lights, too. 'Bearing the palm' here would be Austrians with their relatively mild politics and democratic allowances (they actually cherished Ukrainian nationalism, chiefly to spite Russia in the larger geopolitical game), to be later changed by German Nazis that used rogue Ukrainian nationalists in the said punitive expeditions and in some of their military operations against the Soviet Union, the most recent 'good master' being the United States and the collective West in general. Curiously enough, Canada gave refuge to a lot of Nazi collaborators from Western Ukraine after Germany was routed by the Soviets, with some help from the Allies, in 1945. They were then utilized in the ideological warfare with the Soviet Union and, later on, in fueling anti-Russia sentiments, Soviet or not, in the independent Ukraine, of which the said 'Holodomor' was but a part. As for Poles and Jews as other major objects of their hatred, apparently these were 'zoomed out', much at the bidding of Americans, so that only Russians would remain its major recipients, all in accordance with the geopolitical agenda of the new master. (Rest)
...My presentation may have been somewhat one-sided thus far. Whatever Ukrainian ultra-rights' devilish doings in the first half of the twentieth century had been (again, I am focusing exclusively on the nucleus Ukrainians), now I shall attempt to play the role of the devil's advocate.
From what I have learned, at least some Western Ukrainians were coerced to take part in punitive operations by their more frenzied countrymen under threat of death, theirs or their close ones'. Occasionally, Ukrainian nationalists would save their Jewish, Polish, or Russian friends, their humanity prevailing over ideological froth. Apparently, the majority of them were embittered with what Poles and Russians had done to them and/or their ancestors and craved for justice.
With Jews my 'advocacy' comes to a standstill though, for the acts these poor people received hadn't been precipitated by any prior major wrongs directed to Ukrainians on their, or their forefathers', part. It was a purely ideological 'thing' in tune with the Nazi spirit of the time, which was sheer unmotivated evil or, rather, motivated with its evilness alone.
Coming back to Poles and Russians, the amount of cruelty received by them seemed to be way beyond the “tooth for tooth” retaliation as the Bible, more like the Old Testament, prescribes. It is not by chance that I am throwing in biblical themes, for the overwhelming majority of Western Ukrainian identified themselves, and still identify, as Christians. Oddly as it sounds, there were priests in Ukrainian SS divisions and punitive squadrons, which was nothing but a reflection of a very bizarre cross-breed of Christianity and unbridled nationalism, essentially two incompatibles, in the first place.
Changing now my advocate gown for that of a judge, whatever justice dwelt with Ukrainian nationalists in the nucleus Ukraine before the 1930's, human or Divine, it appears to have been nullified with the subsequently committed atrocities, along with deep ideological entrenchments justifying these, with them ending up in the negative balance, as it were. (Rest)
...Before I proceed any further, the yearned-for independent state of Ukrainian nationalists as informed with their ideology of its 1920's-1930's version, merits a closer and, at the same time, broader and deeper look.
Here, I would like to offer the reader an exercise at abstraction. Apart from the 'justified' violence against the enemies, what would have been life like in a might-be Ukrainian state in the mid-twentieth century, had it ever materialized, with enemies, real or perceived, nicely 'cleansed out' and other major ideological tenets brought to their logical conclusion?
Religion-wise, the already mentioned cross-breed of the incompatibles – Christianity and flagrant nationalism – would apparently have provided the bedrock, a rather shaky one at that, for the rest of the 'superstructure'. What kind of leaders would have ruled it? What kind of art and literature would have been cultivated? What kind of education system would have been put in place? What kind of saints, philosophers, and thinkers would have emerged there or studied? Would largesse and creativity have been encouraged and to what extent? Or would it have been living in a spiritually stifling atmosphere, not unlike, say, that of North Korea? For one thing, the Spirit, according to the Bible, transcends national boundaries, breathes where He wills, and doesn't seem to grace institutionalized hatred and its deeds as coming, in turn, from narrow-mindedness with its lack of metacognition and imagination and, as a matter of course, fallacious ideation. This calls for a broader question yet: as idealistic as it sounds, shouldn't a state with its laws, customs, beliefs and core values, be judged, first and foremost, against its being more or less on close terms with the Spirit, that is, God? I will return to this question in due course.
Coming back down to earth where cynical 'interests' oftentimes substitute goodwill, Ukrainian ideologists like Stepan Bandera didn't seem to be people of imagination and much largesse, among other things. For this very reason their ideology, if stripped of hatred and calls to inhuman violence, would have shrunk into a vision essentially marked with pettiness and backwardness and profusely decorated with paraphernalia like vyshyvanky or pysanky no matter their might-be deeper symbolism.
Even if Ukrainian nationalists had succeeded in securing a piece of land for their political and cultural experiments in line with the spirit of the time, the defeat of their then master Nazi Germany and the rise of America, a future one, with its commitment, real or trumped-up, to spreading democracy and pluralism all over the planet, would have rendered the nationalistic experiments backward, that is, not being in the lockstep with time or “on the right side of history”. Thinking back to my Canadian colleague in the joys of landscaping and his 'diagnosing' Canadian Ukrainians with being backward, it doesn't take a very deep analysis – I am going to undertake it nonetheless – to see through their mindset.
Be that as it might, neither did Austrian masters allow in their time, nor would Nazi Germans have allowed the nucleus Ukrainians to have their own independent state, for they saw them simply as instruments in a greater scheme of things and looked down on them, particularly Nazi Germans, as expandable racially inferior ones. For one thing, Hitler didn't make a secret of this.
One might profitably ask: are the current masters any different in this regard? Judging by their acts and pronouncements alone (the ideological aspect will be considered separately later on), say, that Ukrainians should fight Russia to the last drop of their blood, this barely reminds a love affair, to say the least.
Astonishing, on the other side, is the eagerness of Ukrainians, if not of common people then the authorities, to make all these irrational sacrifices (hadn't it come to the gore part though, the majority of common Ukrainians would have remained very much enamored with, or hypnotized by, the 'master'), that's apart from all other apparently psychotic outpourings of the today 'Ukraineness'. Could these have come from a place other than some infernal recesses? If yes – and this is basically my answer to this question and yet another contention of mine – what kind of torch would be bright enough to illuminate them?
"Ukraine and Beyond". An essay
Ukraine? Or Russia? Who is (more) culpable for the incensed scrimmage of the neighbors, essentially two kindred peoples? Are there any third parties partaking in the culpability? Is there an overarching ideological or civilizational clash resounding? Is it purely about human plane or there might be a bigger preternatural drama unfolding behind what meets the eye? A former Ukrainian national, currently Russian citizen, but, most importantly, human being in the quest for a higher truth, I am going to present my personal take on the standoff between my former and current motherlands. In all this, I will be equipped, as per my lights, with some common sense and reasoning skills, lots of evidence from those on the ground, tons of 'media chaff' sifted through for the grains of truth, some general knowledge, some more specific, including Jungian ideas, and a number of spiritual insights, personal and otherwise, pertaining to the events. And just for starters: I do understand the reasons behind Russia's “unmotivated invasion” into Ukraine in February 2022. If my reader is patient enough – those too impatient and entrenched can hardly be my target audience anyways – my perspective might unroll before his or her eyes as a meticulously woven and, perhaps, somewhat intricate tapestry. It is, of course, up to the reader then to decide whether to put it to any good use.
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