December 1 is a date that is easy to overlook in the calendar. But it was on this very day in 1991 that Ukrainians signed the verdict on the USSR. 90.32% – “yes” to Independence. Without conditions, without special statuses, without consultations with experts from Moscow or Washington. At that moment, not a single state in the world had recognized Ukraine. Washington advised not to hurry: George H. W. Bush in Kyiv called Ukrainian independence “suicidal nationalism” and urged Ukraine to remain in a “renewed” Union. Only after the referendum did Canada and Poland become the first to grant recognition, and the United States did so only on December 25.
The starting point worth emphasizing is this: it was not politicians who led the people to Independence; it was the people who forced politicians to catch up with reality. And this stands in sharp contrast to the present moment, when the fate of the war and peace plans is discussed not as a continuation of the will of society, but as a set of deals between closed offices – in Kyiv, Moscow, Washington, and now Florida.
Russia strikes Ukrainian cities with combined drone and missile attacks, knocking out the energy infrastructure again and again, leaving entire regions without light and heat, killing civilians in Kherson, Kyiv, frontline towns – everywhere. At the same time, a Ukrainian delegation flies to the United States to meet not so much with the administration as with the new “architects of peace” – Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and Marco Rubio. One professional politician-diplomat and two people from the register of big deals, not big strategies.
The basis of this plan has long been written not in Kyiv and not even in Florida. It emerged in the conversations of Witkoff and Kushner with Kyrylo Dmitriev – the same Russian operator who has been persuading the West for years that sanctions against Moscow are a mistake and that the right path is joint investment funds and “win-win”. Hence the 28 points, later reduced to approximately 19 – a scheme in which Ukraine appears as a market, a territory, and a risk, but not as a subject.
In the G7 and EU countries, about 300 billion dollars of Russian reserves are blocked, most of them in Europe. This money should have become direct reparations. Instead, there is an attempt to turn it into fuel for two funds: one – for the “reconstruction of Ukraine”, the other – for joint Russian-American projects. In the first case, Ukrainian ruins become a site for profits, where a share of the income goes back to the United States; in the second, Russia is offered a slow rehabilitation through “business for the sake of peace”.
In the end, a strange balance emerges: Russia retains the seized territories, gains the prospect of a gradual lifting of sanctions and a return to the club of major players. The United States gets the right to say that it stopped the war, saved on defense, and even made money. Europe is sent to the cash desk – to provide additional financing for what Russian assets do not cover. Ukraine receives virtual sums under foreign management, a limited army, a ban on NATO, and a demand to formalize what is now held and washed in blood – the fortress cities of Donbas, the south, the frontline areas.
The most interesting thing is that even cold arithmetic is not on the side of such a “peace”. Analysts at the American Enterprise Institute have calculated that the defeat of Ukraine and the forced strengthening of Europe’s defenses will cost the United States approximately 808 billion dollars in additional expenses over a few years – several times more than the current support for Kyiv. In other words, from the point of view of money, the Dmitriev–Witkoff plan is not about saving, but about shifting the bill into the future. But a short political horizon always loses to long geopolitics.
At the same time in Kyiv, what for a long time was considered the immutable framework of power is falling apart. Andrii Yermak, the architect of the presidential vertical, the man who built the system of “everything through the Office”, is meeting not with faction leaders but with detectives and prosecutors. Searches, information leaks, conversations about state treason and criminal cases have long crossed the line of rumors.
Yermak is not about show. The show is Zelenskyy’s front camera, evening addresses, “we are all the president”. Yermak is about the classic Ukrainian model: to gather the vertical in one’s own hands, throw out competitors, install one’s own people over money and decisions, keep information and contacts with the enemy under oneself, without forgetting at the same time to demonstrate loyalty to allies. It is a model in which “the man next to the president” becomes the knot of all conversations – from defense contracts and courts to negotiations with Moscow.
The fact that this structure began to crumble precisely now frightens many. It seems as if the last thing that keeps the state from chaos is being destroyed. In reality, something necessary and inevitable is happening: the vertical cannot withstand a war in which the stake is the very existence of the country. It is not the foundation that is cracking, but the superstructure, which for a long time lived by completely different interests. It is unpleasant, painful, frightening, but it looks more like the work of the immune system than the collapse of the organism.
The recent history of Ukraine shows that every time the old system collapses, society turns out to be more alive than the “elite”. It was so after 1991, after 2004, after 2014. And now – as well. The tension in society regarding corruption, military procurement, “insiders” and “outsiders” in the ruling circle does not cancel the main thing: the army stands, volunteer networks work, cities rise after strikes and continue to live. The vertical of power can be reconfigured even in the course of war. To break the country through external pressure or internal scandals is much more difficult than it seems to those who are used to confusing the state with their own offices.
In this picture, the main enemy is not corruption, but infantilism. The desire to shift responsibility onto one or two figures – Yermak, Zelenskyy, Biden, Trump, whoever – while not asking questions of oneself. It is a comfortable position, but it is precisely the one that opens the doors to “peace” plans written somewhere along the line between Moscow and Miami. Someone has to agree. Someone has to accept the idea that “a bad peace is better than war” without reading the fine print. And this someone is not an abstract mass, but quite concrete people who live on social networks, go to elections (when they exist), vote with their hryvnia and their attention.
The picture of the information field is shocking: Russian missiles strike energy facilities and residential buildings, while in the Ukrainian segment of Facebook and Telegram a parallel storyline is being spun about how “Europe torpedoed the peace plan”, “the West does not allow Ukraine to come to an agreement with Russia”, “Ukraine must make concessions, otherwise it will be left alone”. These formulations coincide word for word with the disinformation templates that European analysts have been recording for years: “The EU and NATO are interested in eternal war”, “Ukraine is a puppet that is forbidden to seek peace”.
The real strength of the Kremlin lies not only in missiles but also in its ability to recruit “useful idiots” – people who retransmit the necessary narratives for free, believing them to be common sense. It is they who create pressure from below, which the authors of compromise plans love to use so much. First, it is necessary to convince people that everything has already been lost, then that the allies have betrayed them, and then that any deal is better than continued resistance. As a result, such social energy pushes toward capitulation where the army continues to hold the front.
If one looks at the current situation without hysteria but also without rose-colored glasses, the threat looks like this: part of the American political class is indeed inclined to view Ukraine as a file in a P&L folder. Another part – in both the Republican and Democratic parties – understands that the capitulation of Kyiv would mean not peace but a new arms race, new bases, and new wars. It is precisely this second part that is already criticizing the initial version of the Dmitriev–Witkoff plan as one that resembles a deal with the Kremlin more than a security agreement.
For Ukraine, what becomes critically important is not yet another pleading campaign, but a clear demonstration of the fact that the defeat of Ukraine is more expensive than its support, and that any document which consolidates Russian gains and removes Moscow from under sanctions is not peace. This is all the more convincing when it is confirmed by figures, not only by emotions. And here we are talking not about moral arguments (although they are also important) but about dry calculation.
Ukraine now stands at a point where several processes converge. From the outside – an attempt to sell a “peace plan” that preserves Russia’s gains and opens the door for it to Western money. From the inside – the destruction of the old model of power built on a personal vertical, deals, and backstage contacts, including contacts with the enemy. From above – the fatigue of allies and the temptation to close the “Ukraine” file with any agreement. From below – the fatigue of society and the willingness of part of the people to buy the illusion of peace.
In 1991, Ukrainians managed to make a choice that contradicted both Soviet inertia and Western skepticism. At that time there was no experience of an independent state, no army, no allied guarantees. There was only an inner confidence that continued existence within someone else’s project meant death in the long term. Today the situation is different and at the same time very similar. Russia proposes to “rewrite borders” and “forget the past” in exchange for abandoning full subjectivity. Part of the West is ready to see this as a compromise. Internal “verticals” are accustomed to making deals.
The difference is that now this country has an extraordinarily strong army, unique experience, a firm memory of Bucha and Mariupol, of Kherson and Izium, hundreds of thousands of people who know what it means to live under occupation. And there is a society that, despite all its fatigue, is still capable of distinguishing compromise from capitulation. The fall of Yermak will not bury the state. The attempt to squeeze Ukraine into the Dmitriev–Witkoff business plan will not break it.
December 1 can be left as just another date in the calendar. Or one can remember that once the people forced the state to recognize their will, and not the other way around. Back then, it was necessary to explain one’s own Independence both to the Kremlin and to Washington. Today it will be necessary to explain to that same Kremlin and Washington – and to one’s own elites as well – that Ukraine is not sold wholesale together with frozen assets. That will be the most accurate way to celebrate the people’s Independence Day in a country that continues to fight for the right to remain itself.
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