I bet you woke up this morning, read the world news, and couldn’t believe it — how is this really happening? Has the world truly plunged into total chaos and madness? You just want to wake up from this nightmare, but instead, it keeps insisting on becoming the new normal — your everyday reality.
This is exactly how Ukrainians felt three years ago — only multiplied by the horrors of war — when Russia launched its criminal full-scale invasion and began bombing our peaceful cities. It made us want to scream: Stop the planet, I want to get off!
Over these three years of full-scale war, we Ukrainians have gone through several stages in our relationship with reality. At first, there was complete rejection and denial — it seemed impossible to believe that a war was not only a crime but utter madness, something that had no place in the 21st century. It felt like all we had to do was take millions of photos of the war, flood social media with stories and reels, translate our messages into every language, and the world would wake up, see the truth — and within weeks, this nightmare would be over.
Righteous anger and fury soon took over, driving the Ukrainian army to carry out brilliant military operations, expelling the occupiers from our land with unimaginable effort. By the end of 2022, there was a sense of euphoria — of mutual support within the country and solidarity from the Western world. It felt like people of goodwill, standing for moral and just principles, could achieve anything together.
By 2023, the war had become our daily reality, just a part of life. Anger turned into powerless hatred, and fear lost its sting — we had grown used to it. When the Kremlin tried to scare us with nuclear strikes, we simply laughed in response. Because what else can an ordinary person do when faced with the most terrifying bomb?
Ukrainians instantly came up with a meme about Shchekavytsia, a historic hill in the center of Kyiv. The joke went that if a nuclear strike were to wipe us all out in a millisecond, we would first gather on Shchekavytsia for a joyful, carefree, ancient Greek-style orgy. The tyrant wouldn’t scare us — if we were to die, we’d do so with dignity, laughing, and with our heads held high. Almost immediately, one of the most popular T-shirts in Ukraine became the one with the slogan: “I’ll be the first on Shchekavytsia.”
By the third year of war, there was no energy left for anger, hatred, or even laughter. It turned out that fear, like hatred, is an incredibly draining emotion — one simply cannot live with it for too long. A sense of emptiness set in, exhaustion, an acceptance of reality as fate—something inescapable. Whatever strength remained was directed toward the daily struggle for existence — often without light or heat in our homes, and most importantly, without hope that this would ever end.
“It turned out that fear, like hatred, is an incredibly draining emotion.”
What can be said today, as the fourth year of this bloody invasion and assault on the world order begins? We have regressed from dreaming of victory over the aggressor to the humiliating hope for an unjust peace.
In practice, this means that the idea of reclaiming the 1991 borders is no longer popular in Ukrainian society. No one seriously talks about territories anymore — the only thing that matters is ending the war, stopping our people from dying on the front lines and in the rear.
Even the word “victory” has become almost taboo. In the past, every birthday toast ended with wishes for a swift victory; every good deed was described on Facebook as “our contribution to the common victory.” Now, speaking like this feels embarrassing. Such lofty words might still belong in the trenches, spoken by soldiers-turned-heroes — but there are fewer and fewer of them every day. On the home front, that kind of rhetoric sounds cheap and hollow.
Now, we hear talks of a potential peace agreement, but it’s already clear that no matter how it plays out, for Ukraine, it will be humiliating — some outcomes worse than others, but none truly just. A peace deal may at least temporarily stop the bloodshed, but it won’t restore the most important thing. And I’m not talking about lost territory — I’m talking about justice.
What kind of world will we wake up to after this so-called peace? Not just a world where a stronger country has bitten off 20% of a weaker one.
We are about to start living in a world where a war criminal orders the execution of unarmed prisoners of war kneeling before their killers and then proudly spreads footage of the massacre through his own propaganda channels. A world where people are beheaded or bludgeoned to death with sledgehammers, where children’s oncology hospitals are bombed, where power stations are destroyed in the dead of winter to freeze millions of civilians to death, where a drone packed with explosives is deliberately aimed at the sarcophagus of a nuclear power plant during the most critical security conference. And no one is held accountable for any of it.
Yes, the disgust you feel reading these lines is absolutely justified — and to Ukrainians, it has long been familiar. From now on, this feeling will slowly become a part of your daily life, too. Because even a so-called peace agreement — however humiliating — will not deliver what matters most: the punishment of war criminals and the condemnation of their atrocities.
Instead of facing prison or isolation, the aggressor will take a seat at prestigious international gatherings, dictating his own terms. A murderer whose crimes have been captured on camera millions of times in the most documented war in human history will not stand trial but will instead laugh in our faces. And it makes you want to scream: This cannot be!
“Instead of facing prison or isolation, the aggressor will take a seat at prestigious international gatherings, dictating his own terms.”
This is exactly what we felt three years ago, in February 2022. We wanted to shake the world awake, to scream until someone listened. The West sympathized with us, helped us, but refused to acknowledge the truth: this war was against them, too. Today, that terrifying realization is finally dawning on Europeans, as it becomes clear to all that if war comes, America will not fight for Europe, and NATO no longer works.
Tragically, it wasn’t Vladimir Putin’s crimes or Ukraine’s warnings that woke Europe up — it was Donald Trump. This geopolitical shift — what is, in reality, America’s betrayal — has forced Europe to face a conclusion that was already obvious three years ago.
The reason for the global chaos we now see — where Trump openly speaks about occupying Greenland and makes it clear that Europe is no longer under America’s security umbrella — is painfully simple. It is the unpunished evil of Putin’s aggression against Ukraine. That is what ultimately shattered the world order and erased all rules. It was this cynical and successful assault on global stability that led to the absurd reality where the International Criminal Court, which issued an arrest warrant for Putin, is now facing sanctions from what was once the leading democratic nation in the world.
This is now a world of mockery, humiliation, and the brazen trampling of not just political norms but the moral and ethical values that define Europe itself. The evil genie has been let out of the bottle, and with each passing day, it grows stronger, bolder, more aggressive. Does anyone still doubt that if it is not stopped, not punished, it will attack again after some so-called peace agreement? And next time, it likely won’t be just Ukraine.
So forgive me, but after four years of war, my message to you from Ukraine may not be to your liking. We, Ukrainians, are glad that you are finally beginning to realize the truth: this war is against all of us — including you. And the criminal does not even bother to hide his bloodstained teeth. Yes, it is good — though tragically late — that after 1,100 days of war, from Kyiv to Brussels, there is finally a shared understanding: we are all aboard the same Titanic. A ship that will never reach America — because America is far away, and our disaster is here.
We, Ukrainians, clenched our teeth long ago and did what needed to be done to survive this Titanic. Now, it will be interesting to see what choice you make: will you search for a lifeboat together with us — or will you continue to sink helplessly beneath the waves to the sentimental strains of “Ode to Joy”?
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in the op-ed section are those of the authors and do not purport to reflect the views of the Kyiv Independent.
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