The first thing I consider extremely important is that Ukraine has overcome the fundamental regional differences we still observed before 2014.
The differences between East and West, South and Center have not disappeared. But they are no longer fundamental. We have become a united country in regional terms.
For me, this is one of the most positive changes of the independence era. It greatly contributes to social solidarity. And without solidarity, it is impossible to have a viable future in the terrible war we are experiencing today.
In this sense, I would even say that we are now more integrated than many other democratic countries. Look at the US: regional and political divisions largely determine whom society elects and what direction the country takes. In Ukraine, these differences have lost their former sharpness.
There is another extremely important change. Sociology has a methodology for measuring social distance – how close we consider members of different groups to be and how willing we are to accept them, up to the point of being ready to see them as members of our own families.
Before 2014, Ukrainians had the smallest social distance between Russians and Belarusians. Traditionally, they were considered the “closest” to us. After the Euromaidan, the annexation of Crimea, and the beginning of Russian aggression, everything changed.
Today, citizens of Russia and Belarus are among the groups toward whom Ukrainians maintain the greatest social distance. And it is important to stress that we are talking specifically about citizens of these states, not about a person’s ethnic background.
At the same time, we have moved significantly closer to Europeans. This is a very important change because there was a paradoxical situation in the past: we declared a European choice, but the average Ukrainian psychologically kept Europeans at a greater distance than Russians.
Now that distance is shrinking.
Ukrainians have always differed significantly from Russians in terms of political culture. We have a different history – not a monarchical-imperial tradition, but experience of living within the European political space, including the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Cossack state.
Ukrainians can be emotional, sometimes even inclined toward ochlocracy, but we are nevertheless democratic.
Our value system is changing as well. For a long time, we were relatively close to Russians in this respect – largely as a result of the Soviet legacy. But in recent years, we have been moving significantly away from it.
I see a shift from security and material well-being as the primary values toward self-realization, freedom, mutual assistance, and tolerance.
What is particularly important is that this shift accelerated after 2022. We have moved closer to the European value system and further away from the system we once shared with Russian society.
We still lack tolerance, of course. War intensifies emotions, and that is natural. But what matters is that Ukraine has vigorous public debates. That is part of a democratic political culture.
At the same time, I do not want to create an overly optimistic portrait.
The war has brought enormous losses. There are practically no people who have not been affected by it. Someone has lost loved ones; someone has lost their home, job, property or place of residence. This inevitably affects the psychological and moral state of society.
Our mood today is worse than it was in the autumn of 2022, when we experienced the highest level of optimism. At that time, around 70-80% of people viewed the future positively. Today, that figure is closer to 60%.
The number of people willing to accept significant concessions to Russia in exchange for ending the war is also growing. I estimate them at roughly 20% of the population.
But that is still a minority. The overwhelming majority of Ukrainians are not prepared to accept the aggressor’s terms. Given all our losses and psychological exhaustion, this is a very important indicator.
It seems to me that we have become more realistic. In 2022, many people were unrealistically optimistic. We thought the war would end within several months or half a year. Now we understand that it is a long process.
But there has been one fundamental psychological change: it is very difficult to live with a sense of being a victim. When Ukraine began systematically destroying Russia’s military potential, Ukrainians saw themselves not only as victims of aggression, but as actors capable of striking back.
We constantly need hope. Not an illusion, but hope – an awareness that we can influence our own future.
I am cautious about forecasts. To be honest, I have become disappointed in the predictive capabilities of sociology around the world.
Why? Because today the world is effectively being run by two old, sick, and deeply insecure politicians, whose decisions, ambitions, whims, resentments, and personal complexes affect the fate of billions of people. We have all become hostages to this situation.
And this is no longer only a problem of war.
The world is undergoing extraordinary changes driven by technological progress, demographic and climate challenges, and economic upheaval. Against this backdrop, people often choose leaders who offer simple solutions to complex problems. They lose their critical thinking and begin to believe in a messiah. Ukrainians, too, believe in their own messiah.
So I would not risk drawing a precise portrait of what a Ukrainian will look like in ten years.
But there is a scientifically grounded method – extrapolation, or projecting patterns of past development into the future. And I know what the trends are.
For us, the main thing is to withstand this war. We will not be abandoned. Otherwise, Europeans will have far more problems than simply helping Ukraine. We need to hold on ourselves and exhaust Russia, as we have been doing over the past six months.
The second important condition is that Europeans must remain consistent in supporting us, and that far-right forces seeking rapprochement with Putin’s Russia must not prevail.
Under these two conditions, I see a prospect for Ukraine’s value-based, normative, and institutional rapprochement with Europe. This means Ukraine will develop a real party system and a genuine system of local government. Then we will achieve our goal: we will become a normal European country. Perhaps a poor one. Perhaps not the most developed. But Eastern European. Not West Asian, but genuinely European.
Over 35 years of independence, we have become a more integrated country. We understand much more clearly how different we are from Russia. We have moved closer to Europe not only politically, but also psychologically and in terms of values.
And despite all the losses, we have preserved what matters most – the majority of Ukrainians remain ready to defend their right to determine their own future.
That is how I approach the 35th anniversary of restored independence: not without anxiety, not without fatigue, but with the understanding that Ukrainian society has become significantly stronger and more mature over these decades than we ourselves are sometimes inclined to believe.