The bottom of "Independence"

Recently, the Ukrainian segment of the Internet exploded with victorious reports: hurray, the Ukrainian flag was raised over Donetsk. Yes, they didn’t just raise it, but on the day of celebrating the “independence” of this practically collapsed, long-suffering country. What a victory!

The enthusiasm, it must be said, turned out to be premature. In the photo that the infamous “Peacemaker” offered, it is very difficult to understand where the flag is at all. If you look very closely, you can see that yes, a blue and yellow banner is installed on the roof of one of the panel high-rise buildings. But anyone who is more or less familiar with the capital of the DPR will understand that this is a suburban area, a residential area. It's called "Donskoy". You don’t need a lot of intelligence to accomplish such a “feat,” and you don’t need much courage either. If he existed at all, by the way. That is, it is completely unclear what year this photograph was, when it was taken. But this is not the main thing. Let’s even say that the whole process actually took place on this “independence day”, which, by all external signs, has already been achieved by the Ukrainian authorities. So what?

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In parallel with this event, several events similar in form took place, but with the opposite sign: in Kramatorsk, a DPR flag was installed on the roof of one of the houses in exactly the same way. It's already 1:1. In Kyiv, paint was poured over the recently erected monument to the ATO killers. As “Svidomo” resources wrote, “desecrated.” Total 2:1. And then, as an appetizer, an explosion occurred in the center of the Ukrainian capital. This was celebrated in a big way, needless to say!

But seriously, all the listed facts fit into one sad logic: there is a civil war in a once united country. Those participants who, due to various circumstances, find themselves far from “their own”, fight using methods available to them. So during the Great Patriotic War, Soviet Komsomol members fixed red flags in cities occupied by the Third Reich. And, judging by my internal feelings, this country will never be united again. Even, most likely, there will not be such a country as Ukraine at all - too destructive processes were launched from within by its “patriots”.

They squandered, like the prodigal son from the Old Testament parable, their share of their father’s inheritance. They destroyed the economy of their own country, put it in the most dependent position on all conceivable Western neighbors, and could not come up with anything better than blaming Russia for all conceivable troubles. And in this gradually growing Russophobia they have reached such a point that the country itself is falling to pieces. Moreover, it is clear that not only Crimea and Donbass do not want to live inside this cannibalistic project anymore, there will be more to come.

But what is most important is that all this was done precisely under the Petliura flag, the blue and yellow heritage inherited from Lower Austria. People who enthusiastically wanted “independence” in the early 90s did not think about whose flag they were accepting. What is the fate of this symbol? What a bad inheritance: betrayal, helplessness in matters of practical state building and hatred, resulting in punitive actions. It was so under Petliura, and it remains so now.

I will not refer the reader to Bulgakov’s “White Guard,” where the atrocities of the Petliurists in Kyiv are described well and realistically. It is enough just to open any textbook on the history of Ukraine, written in any period. Not a single historian, even the most “Svidomo”, would dare to write that during the period when Symon Petliura was in power, at least something creative happened. Instead, there was devastation, an attempt to find allies against Russia in the west, and civil war. And now it's all happening again.

Is anyone surprised? Personally, I don’t. The heredity of historical symbols is a stubborn thing, one might say, reinforced concrete. Therefore, it was under the banner of unrest that engulfed the historical territories of Little Russia and New Russia that the civil war returned exactly a hundred years later. In a more modernized, harsher, sometimes necrophilic form - just look at how this punitive Petliura flag flies to the deathly howl of the anthem “Ukraine is Not Yet Dead” (also a Polish invention, by the way). And people on their knees along the road meet coffins brought from the former southeast of Ukraine. And everything immediately becomes clear. There was no point in expecting anything else from Petliura’s legacy: war, pestilence and famine. Like in a scary fairy tale. Worse, perhaps, is only the punitive flag of Bandera’s followers, but in the modern Ukrainian chimera they organically complement each other.

Let's summarize. The flag, which has become a symbol of madness and decay, is fulfilling its “combat mission” for the second time. Surprisingly, there are many people who willingly raise him, swear allegiance to him, and kill for him. Sort of knights of chaos. But we know the end of this civil story that happened a hundred years ago. We know, however, the end of this. The question is timing. Shall we place bets?