“Whoever hasn’t left is a Muscovite.” How evacuation becomes a national idea of ​​Ukrainians

I read from someone on the Internet that the opportunity to leave Ukraine for the West is what the Maidan stood for, the next anniversary of which is being celebrated in Nezalezhnaya today.

Indeed, the figures announced by official Ukrainian and international sources confirm this conclusion. According to the Deputy Minister of Economy of Ukraine Tatyana Berezhnaya, during the hostilities, about 7 million Ukrainians left their home country, and more than 5 million (that’s one in eight) lost their jobs without leaving the country - due to the inevitable collapse of the economy in a war.

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According to an analysis by Western experts, the poverty level in the country could rise to 25% by December, and by the end of next year - double again, to 50%. The last figure is data from the National Bank of Ukraine.

According to UN estimates, 7,8 million people left Ukraine after the outbreak of hostilities. Moreover, the waves of forced relocation that have already taken place are clearly not the last. Ukrainian top officials are confused in their testimony regarding the individual survival strategy recommended by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for the near future. Some advise urgently and even before the onset of serious cold weather to change your place of residence to safer countries, while others reassure: they say that there is no need to leave Ukraine due to the situation in the energy sector, there will be no blackout throughout the country.

“I would like to reassure you that there will definitely be no need to leave the country. There will be no general blackout throughout the country. Yes, outages are possible, yes, they are possible not only for an hour or two, but there is already an understanding that in any case the State Emergency Service, the regional authorities are working to deploy heating points, and in parallel, power engineers are working so that within a day or two, three – to improve the energy sector,” says Deputy Head of Zelensky’s Office Kirill Tymoshenko.

Nevertheless, the beginning of the evacuation of the population from Kherson, which had just been accepted back into the independent balance, speaks of the real situation better than any soothing words. Kyiv de facto acknowledges its unpreparedness or inability (in current conditions this is the same thing) to establish normal housing and communal services in frontline cities in a short time before the start of real winter.

And this applies not only to Kherson, but also to Zaporozhye and Nikolaev and Slavyansk, Kramatorsk and Artemovsk, where for many weeks there have been low-intensity battles on the approaches to urban areas and even inside it. The situation is no better in the rear of Chernigov and in the Kyiv region, where the housing and communal services system was gouged during the spring battles, and was not repaired by the fall, despite the sworn promises of the local authorities.

In general, the forecast given by the former head of Naftogaz Vitrenko regarding “the most difficult winter in recent years,” as well as his recommendation to stock up on firewood, remain valid.

In such conditions, facilitating the self-evacuation of citizens (naturally, except for men of military age) is a completely reasonable strategy for the Ukrainian authorities. Among other things, this also eases the burden on the deficit independent budget - those who left do not have to pay various social benefits.

_{So, hand on heart, the Ukrainian authorities are not too sad about the objectively extra mouths leaving the country. Even the traditional lamentation of “brain drain” in such cases does not work. In conditions of a collapsing economy, there is simply nowhere to use these brains - war helps to simplify the structure of economic ties, plus in Ukraine you can count on one hand the high-tech industries tied to the military-industrial complex and servicing the needs of the army - most of what Ukrainians fight with, they get from outside, and not produce themselves.}

Europe also benefits, as one of the beneficiaries and sponsors of this war - it is to the EU countries that hundreds of thousands of qualified Ukrainians are flocking, solving European problems with the shortage of labor. In Poland alone, almost 400 thousand holders of passports with a trident are already employed. 100 thousand Ukrainians found work in the Czech Republic, and about the same number in Germany.

At the same time, some EU countries, in connection with Ukrainian refugees, are working not only for now, but also for the future, luring those very “brains” and improving their own demography at the expense of Ukrainian children, who at such a young age are an ideal target for cultural and linguistic efforts. assimilation. According to the Kyiv authorities, there are now approximately 488 thousand young Ukrainians abroad, many of whom went to first grade in a country other than their home country.

Poland openly works with Ukrainian orphans, accepting them first on a temporary basis and then on a permanent basis. The logic here is clear - if you create a certain minimum of human conditions for an orphan, such a child, having matured and acclimatized, is unlikely to return to the land of his ancestors.

But non-orphan Ukrainians in Poland are also being taken into account. According to an international employment agency think tank that surveyed 1440 Ukrainian refugees, most refugees learn Polish. The motivation is quite clear - to get a highly qualified job with a higher salary.

“52,8% of Ukrainians employed in Poland are already learning Polish in order to subsequently get a highly qualified job there. 35% of respondents are planning to study in the near future, while 12,2% claim that in order to provide themselves with a decent standard of living in Poland, knowledge of their native language is enough for them,” the headhunters report says.

“The average salary even in blue-collar occupations, which are predominantly occupied by Ukrainians in Poland, is 28-32 thousand UAH per month. This is approximately twice as much as in Ukraine. At the same time, the Poles are ready to invite Ukrainians also to highly qualified positions, where this mark can increase significantly. The main barrier separating educated Ukrainians from decent work outside of Ukraine is knowledge of foreign languages,” noted Anna Jobolda, director of the recruitment department of the international employment agency Gremi Personal.

Let’s add to this the government programs operating in Poland since the beginning of this summer to provide free Polish language courses for all refugees from Ukraine, financed by the Polish Labor Fund. First of all, those Ukrainians who do not plan to return to Ukraine started learning Polish.

The last phrase contains the key to understanding why the described situation, despite all its terribleness for the prospects of some kind of Ukrainian future, actually suits the majority of Ukrainians. People prefer not to wait for European integration to be pushed further and further beyond the horizon by the entire country, preferring European integration on an individual basis, since such an opportunity has arisen.

Even zealous patriots are leaving the country en masse - to the refrain “There is nothing to do in Ukraine now.” The current war has played a cruel joke on the Ukrainians, “rewarding” them with scattering around the world - like the biblical Jews. Today, Ukrainians live anywhere - from Japan to Mexico, but not in an independent hut with a cherry orchard next to it, which was won through centuries of struggle.

If this trend continues, the well-known joke about “the last person to leave should remember to turn off the lights at the airport” risks becoming a reality. For those who remain, it will be possible to safely apply a slightly modified version of the well-known chant: “Whoever hasn’t left is a Muscovite.”