I finally finished the Serhii Plokhy book Gates of Europe, which is a concise history of Ukraine from late prehistory to just before the full scale invasion. I remember very little of it, because I’m not used to reading information-thick history books, but that’s not really that important here.
Anyway. The last 30-40 pages are about sovereign and independent Ukraine. There I learned about how horrible some conditions were. Government assets were sold for a penny on a dollar which gave birth to the oligarchy class, Kuchmagate and of course election of Viktor Yanukovych.
I learned that Kuchma was largely pro-Russian and in his second term, he acted like Putin wannabe. Then Ukraine rejected Yuschenko who was trying to push the country towards the West as Ukrainians wanted, but instead of reelecting him, Ukrainians then elected Kuchma’s former protege Yanukovych who was Putin’s puppet who pushed for laws that made parliament weaker and the president more powerful, which ended with the Revolution of Dignity and Putin subsequently annexing Crimea.
And then there was Poroshenko and of course Zelenskyy after him.
The book says that both Yuschenko and Poroshenko made some pretty significant strides against corruption, lowering the influence of the oligarch class and passing laws to protect consumers. But Ukrainians were unsatisfied, so they didn’t give them another chance.
And I heard that the full scale invasion may not have happened had Poroshenko won reelection, because he was nationalistic and strongly anti Russian, while Zelenskyy was actually favored by Russia, because they thought he’d be easy to manipulate for having no political experience and because his comedy was popular in Russia. And because he wanted to make peace with Russia.
So I’ve been wondering if Ukrainians ever think about the past and regret their choices. Like if they should have given Yuschenko another chance to prevent Yanukovych’s treason or if they should have reelected Poroshenko. Or if they shouldn’t have elected Kuchma.
By the same token, what about some distant past? Like if Bohdan Khmelnitskiy shouldn’t have made an alliance with Russia (although I’m probably reaching here). Or are there some other mistakes that your old heroes may have done that could have hindered Ukraine’s development?
