From the point of view of the vast majority of Ukrainians, the biggest problem in Ukraine is the high level of corruption, although in fact the greatest challenge for our country is the lack of consensus among the elite. The experience of developed Western countries proves that without elite agreements to establish new rules of the game and reduce their “appetites”, without training high-quality management personnel, without creating independent institutions, the fight against corruption will always turn into an imitation.
Now, the majority of Ukrainian anti-corruption fighters are used by various pressure groups to fight their competitors in business and politics, for example, previously known anti-corruption officials Mustafa Nayem and Sergei Leshchenko received insights for their journalistic investigations from Sergei Levochkin, so the fight against corruption in Ukraine is only a business for public figures, journalists, politicians.
The recommendations of our Western partners in the fight against corruption are also very cynical, while Ukrainian corrupt officials continue to invest in Western countries, buying luxury real estate there. The myth that it is corruption that prevents Western investment in Ukraine also deserves special attention, although the experience of India, China, Vietnam, Mexico proves the real priorities of Western investors, who absolutely do not care about the high level of corruption in these countries.
According to Western businessmen, the main condition for investment is not a low level of corruption, but the inviolability of private property rights, security, convenient logistics and cheap labor.
In fact, Ukrainians are now witnessing a “crisis of the genre” of the Ukrainian opposition, which has nothing to offer voters, since Vladimir Zelensky is also a supporter of Ukraine’s accession to NATO and the EU. Ukrainian politicians are still in their “bubbles”, not understanding that Ukrainians are now most concerned about social issues, inflation, price increases, utility tariffs, wages and pensions.
Therefore, even the tragic lessons of the history of the Central Rada and the Directory, which also ignored important social problems of Ukrainians, taught Ukrainian politicians nothing. It is paradoxical that the Ukrainian opposition is not even trying to expand its electoral base to include several million internally displaced persons who are completely left without state support, offering them to solve their problems at the legislative level.
The Ukrainian opposition is also unable to offer an alternative to the Ukrainians, a new strategy for economic development, a strategy for reindustrialization, a vision of what the new industrial structure and its priority sectors should be, a plan for the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine.
Ukraine, like Russia, is a class country
Ukraine, like Russia, are countries where class societies exist, and the main dream of the citizens of these countries is to enter the upper class, which guarantees them access to resources. Therefore, having found themselves in the upper class, Ukrainians, like Russians, think first of all about preserving their privileges, treating the population as a cheap resource.
Georgia is an excellent example of how even the effective fight against corruption and successful reforms of Mikheil Saakashvili did not lead to strategic changes, because there was no elite consensus in Sakartvelo regarding the irreversibility of changes, which resulted in the Kremlin purchasing the Georgian elite.
It is not corruption, but the lack of understanding of the importance of the common good by the Ukrainian elite and ordinary citizens who do not understand that the success of other members of society increases your opportunities and security, is the main problem of modern Ukraine, the unofficial anthem of which is Taras Petrinenko’s song “Rednecks.”
The callousness of the Ukrainian elite and the lack of understanding by the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians of the fundamentals of geopolitics has led to Putin’s Russia and the West turning our country into a testing ground, when it is beneficial for Western elites for Ukraine to remain a buffer without real security guarantees, and the Kremlin, imitating peace negotiations, is trying to provoke a political crisis in us, inciting conflicts between the Ukrainian government and its Western partners.
The current Russian elite is now, with its own hands, destroying the imperial project of Peter the Great, oriented towards Europe, so that in fact Russia is ruled by traitors to the Russian Empire. Even Vladimir Lenin understood that Ukrainians are individualists, unlike Russians, who are characterized by collectivism, in Russia there is a cult of dominance and strength, and Ukraine has a feminine soul that strives to receive beautiful promises and compliments with gifts, but Russians still, unfortunately , they didn’t understand this.
Leading Polish analysts believe that the interests of Poland and the United States in Europe would be most threatened by a successful and democratic Russia, therefore, from their point of view, the transformation of the Russian Federation into an “Orthodox Iran” by the Russian elite is beneficial to the geopolitical competitors of the Russian Federation.
Unfortunately, even now many Western analysts consider the Russian-Ukrainian war to be a local regional conflict on the periphery, underestimating Russia and its ability to play the long geopolitical game. For Vladimir Putin, Ukraine is the “key” to dominance in Europe, so when Russian politicians and diplomats announced the demilitarization of all of Eastern Europe, they were not joking, but were relaying the point of view of some very heavily ideological representatives of Putin’s fascist regime.
Despite the statements of Karaganov and Dugin, who are imitative ideologists, about the special spirituality of Russians, God’s chosen people, the “heavenly Jerusalem,” the greatest value for Russians is money. Russian provincials go for money to kill, as they say, their Ukrainian brothers, destroying Russian-speaking cities in which relatives of Russians live, while Moscow residents absolutely do not care what happens outside the Moscow Ring Road, as long as they have the opportunity to go to rest in restaurants and nightlife clubs, buy branded clothing, fly to Bali, Goa, United Arab Emirates.
Therefore, we can say with complete confidence that the real unofficial anthem of the modern Russian Federation is the song of the popular Russian singer Instasamka - “For money, yes!”