While the rural poor are coerced into fighting at the front lines, there is a well-off urban minority that lives a relatively protected, comfortable life in Kyiv and Lviv. This “warrior elite” – composed of activists, intellectuals, journalists and NGO workers – maintains the patriotic narrative that Ukraine must fight till victory.
Yet, it seems many members of this elite appear to be reluctant to join the fight at the front line. There have been a number of high-profile patriotic journalists and activists who have called for mass mobilisation, while themselves seeking exemptions on medical or other grounds.
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Ukraine’s is simply one of many post-Soviet trajectories shaped by the modernising successes and later the degradation of the Soviet revolution. Like in many other countries in the region, the state after independence was captured by predatory and comprador elites who prioritised their own interests over the public good.
This failure to deliver meaningful opportunities and protections for the majority of Ukrainians has left the state unable to demand much from them in return. As a result, today, Ukraine is unable to fully mobilise its people who are divided by a profound sociopolitical disconnect.
Contrary to the popular narrative of national unity, there has been no cohesive project of national development to bridge the divide between those bearing the brunt of the war and the political and intellectual elites who claim to represent them both at home and abroad. This disconnect undermines the idea of a shared purpose driving the nation forward.
More and more, it seems the only emotion truly uniting the fragmented Ukrainian nation is fear. Not the lofty ideals of nation-building, but the visceral dread of personal and communal devastation. This fear stems from the apprehension of losing one’s home if the front line comes close, the anguish of becoming precarious refugees, or the terror of enduring months in basements, hiding from relentless shelling and street battles. Even for those whose homes remain intact, fear persists – of lawlessness, looting, murder, sexual violence – the grim realities that often accompany military occupations.
If Ukrainians are united only by a fundamentally negative coalition – by shared fears rather than shared aspirations – then what happens when these fears begin to shift and compete? Some people start weighing them against one another. The fear of losing one’s home to invasion is measured against the fear of enduring forced conscription, becoming cannon fodder in a war that seems increasingly difficult to win.
There is the fear of repression under occupation, juxtaposed with the fear of being arrested in a state where civil society and government increasingly diverge from their own views of freedom and human rights. There is the fear of being humiliated as a khokhol by Russians or as a Russian-speaking mankurt (a disparaging term for someone who has lost touch with their roots) by your own nationalists.
These shifting fears drive the Ukrainian population, but they do not unite it.
We talked to a Ukrainian man in his 50s who did not leave his town in the Kharkiv region even when the front line got just a few kilometres from it and there was regular shelling by the Russians. He could have left for a safer part of Ukraine, but he did not and stayed to help, distributing humanitarian aid to his neighbours.
He is not a coward; he is a patriot. But as he said, he is not willing “to die for the state we have now. Not for that Ukraine which is imposed on us now …This is my country, but this is not my state.”
