These are frightening times, terrifying epochs, like apocalyptic visions, times of great realizations of the Mystery, times frightening and blessed

—Georges Florovsky, P. N. Savitskii, Nikolai Trubetzkoy, Pierre Souvtchinsky, Exodus to the East: Forebodings and Events, (Charles Schlacks, Jr., 1996), 122.

Volodymyr Ishchenko, New Left Review:

The Euromaidan was not a rupture in the sense of a social revolution. As my colleague Oleg Zhuravlev and I have written, it shared features with other post-Soviet uprisings and also with those of the Arab Spring in 2011.¹ These were not upheavals that led to fundamental social changes in the class structure—nor even in the political structure of the state. Instead they were mobilizations that helped to replace the elites, but where the new elites were actually factions of the same class. The Maidan revolutions in Ukraine—the 2014 Euromaidan was the last of the three—were similar. These are, in a sense, deficient revolutions: they create a revolutionary legitimacy that can then be hijacked by agents who are not actually representative of the interests of the revolutionary participants. The Euromaidan was captured by several agents, all of whom participated in the uprising and contributed to its success, but who were very far from representing the whole range of forces involved or the motivations that drove ordinary Ukrainians to support Euromaidan. In this sense, while responding to the post-Soviet crisis of political representation, the Euromaidan also reproduced and intensified it.

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Those who lost power were, first, the sections of the Ukrainian elite—let’s call them political capitalists, in the Weberian sense: exploiting the political opportunities their offices provided for profit-seeking—organized in the Party of Regions, which backed Viktor Yanukovych. After the Euromaidan, the party collapsed. These oligarchs, as they are usually called, were politically reorganized; but they retained control over some of the crucial sectors of the Ukrainian economy, so the Forbes list of the richest people in Ukraine was amazingly stable. Before and after the Euromaidan revolution, the only person on the Top Ten list who made a career change was Poroshenko—a sign of how little change there was in the way the economy was working.

The other significant actor that lost out was the Communist Party of Ukraine—and the left in general.

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On the formal level, in 2014, the president was weakened and parliament was supposedly stronger. The figure of the prime minister, who was chosen by the parliamentary deputies, became more important. But what did not change was the ‘neopatrimonial’ regime, as it is often called in the literature of post-Soviet studies: the informal patron-client relations that dominate politics. It is quite normal to speak of clans in this regard—to say someone is in the ‘clan of Poroshenko’, or ‘clan of Yanukovych’. These informally structured groups, whose relations are hidden from the public, have more influence on how real politics works in our country than the formal clauses of the constitution. So despite the fact that the position of the presidency was formally weakened, Poroshenko was still the most influential politician in the country, able to push more or less what he wanted through parliament.

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The competing oligarchs exploited nationalism in order to cover the absence of ‘revolutionary’ transformations after the Euromaidan, while those in nationalist-neoliberal civil society were pushing for their unpopular agendas thanks to increased leverage against the weakened state.

Welt:

Bundeswirtschaftsminister Robert Habeck hat die Menschen in Deutschland nochmals dazu aufgerufen, Energie zu sparen. „Ich bitte jeden und jede, jetzt schon einen Beitrag zum Energie­sparen zu leisten“, sagte er den Zeitungen der Funke-Mediengruppe (Freitag) vor dem Hintergrund des Ukraine-Krieges. „Als Faust­formel würde ich ausgeben: Zehn Prozent Einsparung geht immer.“ Der Grünen-Politiker kündigte eine entsprechende Kampagne der Regierung an.

„Wir können nur unabhängiger von russischen Importen werden, wenn wir es als großes gemeinsames Projekt ansehen, an dem wir alle mitwirken“, fügte er hinzu. Wenn man an Ostern die Bahn oder das Fahrrad nehmen könne, sei das gut. „Das schont den Geldbeutel und ärgert Putin“, sagte Habeck.

Ich stehe auf einem städtischen Friedhof … Um mich herum Hunderte Menschen. In der Mitte neun Särge, mit rotem Batist umhüllt. Militärs halten Reden. Ein General ergreift das Wort … Frauen in Schwarz weinen. Die Menschen schweigen. Nur ein kleines Mädchen mit Zöpfen schluchzt über einem Sarg: »Papa! Pa-a-a-potschka!! Wo bist du! Du wolltest mir eine Puppe mitbringen, du hast es versprochen. Eine schöne Puppe! Ich hab ein ganzes Heft mit Häusern und Blumen für dich vollgemalt … Ich warte auf dich …« Ein junger Offizier nimmt das Mädchen auf den Arm und trägt es zu einem schwarzen Wolga. Aber wir hören noch lange: »Papa! Pa-a-a-potschka! Liebster Pa-a-potschka …«

Der General spricht … Die Frauen in Schwarz weinen. Wir schweigen. Warum schweigen wir?

Ich will nicht schweigen …

—Swetlana Alexijewitsch, »Zinkjungen: Afghanistan und die Folgen«, (Berlin: Hanser, 2014), 19.

It’s the Armeno-Azerbaijani conflict. You have to resolve it in yourself. Are you an Oriental woman or a Western woman? If you are Oriental, don’t divorce your husband; if you are Western, get yourself a lover and don’t see it as a problem.

—Ludmila Ulitskaya, Sonechka, (New York: Schocken Books, 2005), 228.

Eliot A. Cohen, The Atlantic:

Germany long claimed that it was extending the hand of reconciliation to Russia when in fact it chose to pursue a policy based on greed and naivete. It was not alone in delusion and hypocrisy. For more than a decade, American leadership proved inept, complete with red lines that melted and indifference to the rending of nations in Europe and the leveling of cities and gassing of civilians in Syria. Smug asides about leading from behind seem particularly reprehensible now, as we see what a world without American leadership looks like.

…

The Europeans have been, unsurprisingly, far from uniform in their reactions: Within Germany, the foreign minister from the Green Party is staunch; the chancellor is erratic; some members of his own party are timid. Britain is splendidly assertive.

…

If the Soviet Union could deploy thousands of advisers to North Vietnam in the middle of the Vietnam War without triggering a nuclear conflict, the U.S. can deploy advisers to western Ukraine, or at least to Poland, to train Ukrainian soldiers. Instead, we ship Ukrainian troops to Biloxi, Mississippi, to learn how to operate the Switchblade drone, where their congratulations come from the secretary of defense on a Zoom call from his Pentagon desk. It would be better if he were draping his arm about their shoulders in some muddy field a lot closer to their homeland.

Staunch Annalena Baerbock, erratic Olaf Scholz, splendidly assertive Boris Johnson. The U.S. can deploy advisers to western Ukraine.

The Twitter accounts are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.