The Maidan was a success for Ukrainians as an uprising, but unfortunately it did not turn into a revolution, notes volunteer Gennady Druzenko. But the window of opportunity for Ukraine is not closed — the revolution can and must be ended here and now.
THAT WAS JUST THE BEGINNING…
Ten years ago, our uprising against tyranny and the “Russian world” under the Ukrainian flag won. The price of victory seemed incredible: a hundred people killed in the center of a European capital, the burned-out Maidan, the almost complete absence of power… “Plive kacha…” tore at our soul. It seemed to us that we deserved a better future, that we had won it in an honest duel with evil. And our uprising would turn into a real revolution…
Unfortunately, despite the established name of the events on the Maidan, the rebels won, and the revolution lost. The system has been crippled for six months. The beneficiaries and slogans have changed - the essence of the government, as the legitimate collector of the assets and wealth of Ukraine and its inhabitants, has remained unchanged. Even the annexation of Crimea and the Russian “hybrid” invasion in eastern Ukraine did not help (or maybe hinder?) the true renewal of Ukraine...
In the ten years since the victory of Maidan, we have gone through the annexation of Crimea, the ATO and the JFO, two presidential and parliamentary elections, attempts to look Putin in the eye, kebabs on May Day, February 24, 2022, the loss of the Ukrainian Azov region, victories in the Kyiv, Sumy, and Kharkiv regions, cities and villages in Donbas completely wiped off the face of the earth..
And we, with hundreds of "heavenly hundreds", are back where we were 10 years ago: at a crossroads between radical reforms capable of reviving Ukraine and patriotic noise, which, like a smokescreen, covers up the plundering of the country, which continues despite a terrible war.
According to Hamburg's calculation, the great war came to our lands precisely because none of our uprisings turned into a real revolution. None changed the essence of the vicious system. None turned Ukraine into a land of freedom and opportunity..
Thanks to the hundreds of thousands of those who laid down their lives and health on the battlefields, the window of opportunity for Ukraine is still open. Thanks to them, we are not yet doomed to become a pale copy of the “Russian world” or a peripheral European “buffer.” But we are also not doomed to victory, and Ukraine is not doomed to prosperity.
The future of Ukraine and the world is being decided here and now. And what it will be – just like 10 years ago – depends primarily on us!
