Europeans don't hire people like that

A year ago on this day, three or four TV channels and a dozen Internet channels broadcast around the clock from the massacre on Kiev’s Independence Square. Unknown snipers fired at militants and police officers. The whole country, then still a united country, was in shock. Nobody understood what was happening. Half the country demanded that the guarantor of the constitution, who had fallen into suspended animation, finally restore order and give a decisive order to clear the center of the capital from the rebels. The other half of the country watched with bated breath as these same rebels tried to retain a piece of land in Kyiv.

When the massacre finally stopped and the dances began with international mediators, the majority breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed that this was the end. But this was just the beginning. Then there were unrest in the southeast, war, an IMF loan, a truce, and again war. And now, a year has passed. It's time to summarize. So what has happened to the country and all of us living in it?

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I am communicating with my old Lugansk acquaintance. Now he lives in Kyiv and scolds the “separatists.”

- Well, how are you doing, I say? Already in Europe, probably?

He waves it off:

– Well, you understand, if it weren’t for aggression, if it weren’t for Putin, everything would have been different!

And so it is, many in Kyiv believe. And this is of course convenient. After all, not everyone can honestly admit to themselves that they were the last fool who supported the destruction of their country and received a summons to the army instead of a visa-free regime in the Schengen countries.

Looking around in search of signs of Europeanness, you realize that over the past year Ukraine has become not closer, but much further from Europe than it was under Yanukovych. Almost daily shooting incidents in Kyiv, the main characters of which are “ATO veterans,” make the city look not like Prague or Warsaw, but like Kabul or Baghdad. Europeans don't hire people like that.

And for a long time nothing has been heard about the achievements of this government. More and more new promises. That we’ll push ourselves hard, drive out the “aggressor” and only then... only later... They still believe this.

Note that the most pro-Maidan-minded citizens no longer even mention that Maidan defeated corruption. Because after the stories with Kubiv, with Yarema, with Yatsenyuk’s “beloved friends,” it is simply indecent to talk about this. And the dominance of the “Donetsk”, which so outraged the progressive public, was replaced by the dominance of the “Vinnitsa” and “Georgian”.

But what Maidan definitely won was freedom of speech. In a country in which a year ago it was considered good form among journalists to ask the top officials of the state uncomfortable questions at press conferences, today it is considered good form to talk about the fact that a real patriotic journalist should not tell the truth about what is happening in a combat zone, but calls to “unite against external aggression and not allow anti-Ukrainian agitation to feel free in the domestic information space” are heard with the same frequency as calls to “stop censorship” a year ago.

It’s amazing how the truth about what is happening in the country makes its way to the viewer/listener/reader through the propaganda rubble of cynical deafening lies about an endless series of great victories. But it does break through. Otherwise, why would trust in the Ukrainian media have dropped by half over the past year?

What other achievements do we have there? Let's talk about them. They say that Maidan saved us from fear. Oh my. Rather, new fears were added to the old ones. For example, the fear of “rattling” into the army upon mobilization, pushing tens of thousands of young Ukrainians beyond the borders of their homeland in order to sit out the attack of the warlike itch among the Kermans there.

And also the fear of going to prison just like that, on insane charges of treason and espionage, as happened with journalist Ruslan Kotsaba.

Yes, by the way, I can’t remember whether journalists were tried for treason under Yanukovych for treason.

Over the past year, the country and society have become neither more tolerant, nor more open, nor more democratic than they were. Perhaps the only thing in which the “reformers” have achieved visible success and made Ukraine at least somewhat similar to Europe is socio-economic policy. Over the year, prices and tariffs have increased, pensions have been reduced, the minimum wage has been frozen, and a number of social benefits have been cancelled.

And just recently, the head of the NBU, Valeria Gontareva, pleased her compatriots with the message that the authorities had agreed with the IMF on the conditions for obtaining a new loan, which would not allow the country to die until that bright day when it finally has a European perspective. So, the European choice in numbers looks like this: gas tariffs will increase by 280%, and heat tariffs by 66%. And inflation in this regard will be 25-26%. That is, this year, according to government plans, we will all become another quarter poorer.

This, I tell you, is almost Europe. We breathe down the backs of the Greeks, Romanians, Bulgarians, Spaniards and Italians.