There was a time when Ukraine’s greatest political virtue was not that it was democratic, prosperous or well governed. It was simply that, despite its deep divisions and chronic dysfunction, it was largely peaceful.

That memory is difficult to reconcile with the Ukraine of today.

Having lived and worked in Lviv during the 2000s, one could see the country’s contradictions up close. Lviv was perhaps the most intensely nationalist city in Ukraine, yet beneath the patriotic symbolism was a society struggling with corruption, political manipulation, weak institutions and profound economic insecurity. Ukraine was divided politically and culturally, its elections were frequently contentious, and its courts and police inspired little public confidence.

Yet ordinary Ukrainians were not killing one another in the streets. Political disagreement had not become a permanent armed conflict. Even the sensitive question of Crimea, with its predominantly Russian-speaking population, remained a political problem rather than the immediate cause of a national catastrophe.

That achievement now seems tragically modest. But it was an achievement nonetheless.

Today, Ukraine stands devastated by a war that has cost enormous numbers of lives, displaced millions and transformed large parts of the country. Whatever one’s interpretation of the origins of the conflict, it is impossible to deny that Ukraine has paid the overwhelming human and material price.

The central question, therefore, is not simply who is to blame. It is whether this catastrophe was inevitable.

Ukraine’s tragedy is rooted partly in its own political failures and partly in the decisions of powerful external actors who repeatedly treated the country as an arena for geopolitical competition rather than as a society with its own complex interests.

After independence, Ukraine possessed advantages that could have made it an unusually successful European state. It was geographically positioned between Russia and the European Union. It had substantial industrial capacity, fertile agricultural land, a highly educated population and extensive cultural and economic connections in both directions.

Most importantly, Ukraine was a deeply bilingual and culturally diverse country.

Instead of treating that diversity as an asset, successive political elites increasingly transformed language and identity into instruments of political mobilization. The question of whether Ukrainian or Russian should dominate public life became entangled with competing visions of national identity. Nationalism increasingly demanded not........

© Blitz