what were the results of the referendum on december 1 , 1991, with which we completely coped, because there was an overwhelming majority of people in favor of the independence of ukraine, but you must remember that a few months before that another referendum was held in favor of preserving the soviet union, where the overwhelming majority the majority of people, not in this region of ukraine, but in all others, except for the western lands, were in favor of preserving the soviet union. i remember my emotions at the first founding congress of the movement, but on the one hand i was happy to see people who came precisely to fight for the future of the country , for independence, on the other hand, it hurt me, because before that i went to the congresses of the popular fronts of the baltic countries and saw the public support for what was happening in tallinn at the first such congress, i was stunned by how the whole country... is preparing for the congress of the people's

front of estonia, as the main event in the life of the estonian people. i understood that this was a nationwide movement. in kyiv, at the first congress of the movement, we were in a real aquarium. i remember how i left the congress and did not take off the blue-yellow badge that i had on my lapel, that was on the delegates and participants of the congress, and how about me on the tram in kyiv. looked at like some kind of monster that came out of nowhere and it was creepy because i didn't understand how that could even be like that, and in any way when i say that, i think you and i understand, it is one thing to declare independence and quite another to fill it with real meaning, that meaning which, which yes, which one way or another, er, is

an important part of any state and national construction, and i always there was an absolute conviction that russia does not perceive our statehood as real, and that the more or less peaceful existence of the ukrainian state will continue until the moment when our own attitude to statehood, as an unreal one, coincides with that of russia. vision, because russia has always believed that the former soviet republics are just accidental temporary formations, that sooner or later they will become part of the russian world, that the main condition is that they do not run away, be in the cis, and then in the eurasian union, somewhere else, and as soon as any of these countries started moving in the other direction, it was immediately attacked. from the end of the 80s to the beginning of the 90s,

they staged provocations in latvia, lithuania, estonia, the troops in tbilisi, vilnius, baku, riga, wherever they could use force, inciting ethnic and territorial conflicts, which are now in our new tragedies continue to explode before our eyes, for example in karabash, it all started under the soviet union. transnistrian conflict, abkhazia, south ossetia. we have always believed that it does not concern us. in the end, as soon as ukraine started a clear movement to the side, back in 2004, at first they tried to talk to us in the language of special operations and sabotage, already in 2014 they decided to talk in the language of real war, according to well-known recipes not invented by putin. first. we create

a country for the state of the disabled, and if it does not understand, we change the government. well, listen, what we saw in kyiv in february 2022, relatively speaking, azerbaijanis saw in the 90s, when the troops of field commander suret huseynov with russian weapons stood near the walls of baku, because there was an idea that it was necessary to change the government to a loyal russian one. maybe moscow didn't get everything it wanted there, but i mean, the recipe itself is the same, and as a result, we came to a big war. again, our problem is, i would say, a state problem, that the majority of our population never believed in it, did not believe at all in the possibility of russia attacking us, did not believe that as soon as we choose an independent path of development, that's it. .. will

mean that we will be spoken to in the language of aggression and destruction, and it seems to me that on people still do not believe in the post-soviet space, i have seen this and already cited the results of a sociological survey in kazakhstan. where 73% of respondents do not believe that russia can attack kazakhstan, and i think that you now believe, understand that everything is easy, you will think, kazakhstan, yes kazakhstan, where we were not there, so in this sense it is real the problem, and the underestimation of this danger, i would say, is not only a state underestimation, but a general national underestimation, which was expressed in the results of the presidential and parliamentary elections of 2019, in the end was indicated, regarding the maidan itself and its results, to be concise, i think that a real event like the construction of a ukrainian political nation began on the maidan, which did not exist before the maidan of 2013-2014. i have always wondered, as a person

of jewish origin, whether ukrainians will be able to go beyond the framework of the ethnic project in which they were always received by the russian empire, that ukrainians are exclusively nations. ethnic nation, and it has an absolutely clear border into which no one can cross, unlike the russians, on unlike poles, unlike slovaks or czechs, anyone, and if someone crosses this border, then he is some kind of weirdo, what is he doing there among them, they will trample him now, so i would say that it is maidan 13-14 years became such an annihilation, i annihilation, the disappearance of this border, i always tell how i was at... the concert of slavko vakarchuk on the maidan and there was a hymn, he sang the anthem at the end, and i looked at what my young colleagues were standing in front of me, and they are singing hymns, crying, and i suddenly thought about something i hadn't thought about would, by the way, not a single ethnic ukrainian, i thought that there is not a single ethnic ukrainian among this group of people, but there is none, and

they stand and cry, and this is the birth of a real ukraine, a political nation in which people recognize ukrainian civilizational, cultural, historical, linguistic values, do you understand? and it is such a nation that is the biggest threat to russia, especially when it started from the west and center, moving towards the east and south. and i think that everything that happened afterwards and is happening today is the engraving and strengthening of this very one political nation. we have a political nation, the state also has only to protect and preserve it. thank you. thank you, there was another maidan, well, of course, we are not talking about a maidan, but there was another maidan in 2004-5, and i remember very well how decisions were made then. then

a delegation led by the president of poland kwasniwski arrived, and the negotiations continued, and one of the delegates from the european union, he and i... sat down and he dispersed, there is already a decision about the application , he warned, listen, you will be this night forces against the participants of the orange revolution at that time, well, i warned my people, those who were there for the lutheran, and none of them went, everyone started calling, the number of people only increased, this is one moment about how it works, how it works among the ukrainian people, the second moment when we talk about attempts'. or attempts of the russian empire to influence this or that nation. always the most textbook or the best example was the example of the relations of the russian empire of the polish-lithuanian commonwealth. so in the 18th century, a few years before

what was called the first division of poland, regularly, through her ambassadors, catherine ii conveyed very specific demands, in particular the preservation of the so-called liberum veto, that is... the ability of any one member of the seimas to block a decision on a law of any importance, as in the house of representatives of the us congress. so. and we also see this , that is, what happened and maybe is happening now in our parliament, well, what is happening now, i don’t even know what, because there are no live broadcasts, yes, here are the halls, people’s deputy sofya fedina , i think she will be able to tell what's there if anything is happening, that's the key. history was, i think, both under yushchenko, and under kuchma, and under yanukovych, these are one or other attempts by the russian empire to impose mechanisms or models that would make impossible a real non-declarative movement in the direction of what is called the european or euro-atlantic

community , maybe i'm wrong, i want to believe it, but it manifested itself too clearly at the time in the middle of the 18th century, a few years before the first division. the commonwealth, well, what is called the maidan, what is called the revolution of dignity, is not enough also its manifestation in the polish cycle, in particular it is about the constitution and significant limitations of the polish ruling in quotation marks, of course , the aristocratic oligarchy, and also the russian empire introduced troops and was also in warsaw butch , that is, under the leadership of a russian field marshal, a criminal in fact, a person with frankly perverted with genocidal inclinations, they are behind... a polish suburb by blood, a warsaw suburb of prague, this is also a historical moment, and when we

talk about bucha, i also understand that this is not a new story, and they are in this way, maybe they really tried to intimidate and psychologically break the people, well, we understand that it doesn't work like that, but the trouble doesn't get any easier, kateryna kalytko, have a good day. also thank you for the opportunity of this conversation, for me, in fact, when i saw the topic of the discussion, it was a shock that 10 years have already passed since the actual 13-14 years of this milestone, when everything began, for me it is all very detailed, everything is like yesterday , and actually one of the significant moments for my identity, it was my third revolution, the first was ukraine without kuchma, the second was orange, of course revolution. due to my age, i did not catch these first significant efforts to build

restored ukrainian independence in the early 90s, and in the 13th year i came with such a rather ironic skepticism, when student protests began, when yanukovych tried to turn the other way from european integration. because at one time i saw what ukraine turned into without kuchma, there i still have pain from a broken golden eagle when the weather changes, then a rib, during the orange revolution, i also remember very well when i returned home from kyiv for the weekend to my parents in vinnytsia with orange paraphernalia with a scarf or something with some bows on the sleeve, then people attacked me... and the neighbors laughed at me, that is, here i pick up

vitaliy's opinion in this way that for the society itself, ukrainian independence, democracy, statehood, etc. horizontal self-organization, the right to direct democracy, and the manifestation of popular discontent, let's say, let's call it so pathetic, were something ridiculous and... inappropriate and seemed like something that would not lead to any significant consequences, and likewise in the fall of 13 when the student began maidan first, i looked at it already with the experience of the orange revolution and all our mistakes and setbacks after it, as another attempt by a handful of passionate people to change the ukrainian world... a world stitched together by russian agents, the levers of russian influence,

the indoctrinated consciousness of the broadest masses of the people, and i thought , that here it is again, again it will end, frankly nothing, and on november 31 i was still in kyiv, then i came to vinnytsia and in the morning i read the news about the night of the beating. i was very sorry and conscientious that i was not on the maidan that night, and what started to happen on the first of december really shocked me, because i saw that we no longer allow ourselves to be manipulated, we do not allow, we do not want to allow ourselves to be destroyed, forced, we do not allow ourselves humiliate. and beat, and it’s not even because, as we said, a generation

of parents came out then, because their children were beaten, it’s just that in the end, we came out to defend our right to vote in the most massive way in recent ukrainian history, and from december 1, 13- th year, and then the actual fundamental breaking, of some sort, took place established rules of coexistence, well, in the urban space, in a democratic community, yes, when in the city, which is a security territory, in the city. citizens of ukraine are trying to be physically destroyed and in the end they are physically destroyed and they do not stop and they are ready to follow their idea to the end, whatever that end might be. it all sounds a bit tight -lipped, but nevertheless, it was a very, very important experience for me, very formative,

when i saw that this loneliness was being created. great loneliness that we we cease to be a bunch of possessors, which moves something somewhere, and usually crashes against the wall of national misunderstanding, that is, we really become a community, we grow up as a community, we are very different people, but we have the same basic great values, and this, as it seems to me, allowed us to stand against various forms of russian invasion and aggression for 10 years and ultimately led to the situation where they are trying to finally destroy us physically, to finally solve the ukrainian issue, as it was formulated in the russian imperial narrative voiced publicly, and it is also very strange that in the 21st

century this aryan nazi rhetoric sounds absolutely. and yet, in the space of the ukrainian idea, we still manage to stick together, and we continue to grow, we overcome a lot of growth disorders, we have a lot to work on, but for me , the core , in fact, the backbone of self-knowledge is what we have a community, we finally have something to talk about with each other. and we can trust each other, these are very, very important words, and there was one very subtle, very delicate moment where i would like to emphasize now, kateryna drew attention, that really no one in the world

was ready for such rhetoric, no one in the world was ready for anything. to rhetoric, but to genocidal actions. we found ourselves in a good world in which, well, at least the european continent lived nurturing certain illusions, completely abstracting from what war is. in a few weeks, or in a few days, i don't remember, verbatim, i spoke with andrii piondkovskii, so he was one of the few who said that yes, there will be a war, a war. is being prepared, it was perceived to a certain extent as conspiracy, someone quipped, and for him the main question was not whether there would be a war, whether the civilized world and the united states would be able to influence there, whether there would be a war with or without concentration camps, and so we ended up in a world where they can return, or rather

, concentration camps have returned, yes, where it is possible to implement katen, that is, to take. and kill the prisoners of war, the defenders of mariupol, in the constabulary, kill the defenders of mariupol, that is, the military in the constable, this is the reality to which no one was ready, because everyone nurtured illusions based on the works of francis fukuyama and so on, that is, a world in which history ends and everything gradually turns to soft power, it turned out not. wars have one beastly face, and what happened in buch or in irpyan is fundamentally no different from what happened during the thirty years' war, which ended with the peace of westphalia, when it was recognized that nations have the right to exist and that it is not necessary to apply what is called genocide, but everyone is talking about it again

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mr. vitaly said that, i think most of us would agree with this, that the absolute majority of ukrainians did not believe that a full-scale war was possible, especially in 2013, well, here... i i think that ukraine would then repeat the results of the kazakhstan poll with ease, but i think it is important to understand that the majority of ukrainians do not believed in the possibility of war for various reasons, and perhaps it became possible at all, the beginning of the formation of a political nation became possible, because people who did not believe in the attack of russia for various reasons ... suddenly united, i mean, one group, to to which i belong, i was born shortly before the declaration of independence, and for me ukrainian political

independence and in general a ukrainian independent state is a given, i do not know anything else, it was obvious to me, this is an independent country, on it, of course, in the civilized world, to which i am used to, to which i, well, i grew up in this. it is impossible, but the second group did not believe in the attack, because we are brothers, how come, we all lived together, all our lives, we lived together with russia, and they had the illusion of a peaceful divorce, that we practically remained a family , we just went our separate ways, i even heard such a phrase from people that i am for an independent ukraine as part of the cis, that is, what independence is there, and here it is... in 2013, what is happening is that both groups are surprised, which in essence should have, they have a conflict between them, and they were

caught off guard by what happened immediately after the maidan, the annexation, the war, and these two groups together begin to form a political nation, i think it's important to remember that this was a moment of unification of, say, the homo soviet . who had to get out of this state, and it was a very unpleasant rebirth and a very unpleasant realization for them, and people for whom ukrainian independence was a long time ago. and the question i wanted to ask all of us is whether this process of forming the ukrainian political nation would begin if we they knew in november 2013. what will happen next? a very good question, this is a rhetorical question, as far as i understand, this is a question that requires

deeper reflection, and... well, of course, we have to worry about mr. vitaly now. everyone guessed who i wanted to ask this question to in the first place. i said in 2014 that i had already answered this question. i said that the ukrainian political nation was formed in several steps. the first step took place during the maidan of 2013-2014, and this geographical political nation united the residents of the west and center of ukraine. because exactly... it was, i would said, the main driving force of the maidan, of course, when we stood on the stage and saw the flags from the people who came to the maidan, it was, it was a different geography, from uzhhorod to yalta, but the vast majority of people who shared the idea of ​​this independent ukraine and european ukraine, these were the western and central regions. the annexation of crimea means that, as you are talking about, it largely

started the process of nation building. in the dnieper region of eastern ukraine, because the people who lived in the dnieper region really always believed that they don't just have good neighborly relations with russia, it's not enough that they have equal relations with russia, because dnipro was, was the city where leonid brezhnev and half of the members of the politburo of the central committee of the cpsu , of his time, were born, and these people believed that the russians treat them with respect, it turns out that they don't, well... they never did, but they just saw it with their own eyes finally, although they never believed in it, and the process of diffusion in these regions began of ukraine, and with the beginning of the war in donbas , the process of diffusion in the south began, simply because the people who lived in odesa and also believed that russia has a great civilization, culture, and so on, they understood that russian actions can simply transform odesa into donetsk, and this is how

this diffusion took place, but... for i also had a good question that i asked everyone in 2014, how effective a political nation can be out of fear, and here we got the answer to this question in 2019, yes , a political nation, that i the results of voting for volodymyr zelensky in all regions of the country , demonstrated that there is a political nation, and that it is integral, again from uzhhorod to senelnikov, but they on... demonstrated the quality of this political nation, that such an ordinary political nation of central europe is ready to believe in any populist promise in its own myths, that in in this political nation, everyone invests in the person at the head of the state their visions, which may not coincide with the visions of their neighbor, but they are all united in their choice, this is a very interesting, very interesting moment, and also a very important moment, a moment of lack of self-awareness, if you will , but i can too to give this beautiful example, i would say

not the ability to look at yourself through someone else's eyes. now, many people in ukraine, and i can see it from comments on social networks and so on, like what happened in karabakh. azerbaijan restored its territorial integrity with one blow, the population, the separatists left here, and we do not even understand why this european parliament reacts in a completely different way than we do, they are our allies, and they almost unanimously propose to introduce sanctions against azerbaijan, what is it like that we will too to de-occupy the territories, that is, the idea of ​​the civilized world is that the world generally believes in peaceful solutions, not in war and not at the expense of the interests of the civilian population, and from this point of view, the consequences of the azerbaijani operation look the way they look for the civilized world , but the important thing is not even that, but the fact that russia looks at us just like azerbaijan at karabakh, we ourselves are such separatists, from the point of view of russia, and if azerbaijan solves its territorial issue by... saying goodbye

to the entire population that lives on restored territories and which is not very necessary, perhaps for the future construction of the azerbaijani state, and this is accepted, so why does russia not expel the separatists from those lands that it considers part of historical russia, we can of course say that we, unlike karabakh, are protected by international law, well, we can enjoy this thought, because russia doesn't give a damn about it from ivan the great's bell tower. to this international law and to whom it protects. russia believes that everything is decided by force, only later, after force decides, it is possible to agree on a new one border, so to speak. and it is important that people cannot extrapolate what is happening around them in a real situation. another great example that already concerns...