Nikolai Karpitsky. Studying in Ukraine During the War: “Sorry I didn’t reply during the class – it’s hard to get even a half-decent internet connection in the basement”

Source: PostPravda.info 03.03.2025.
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/frontline-stories/studying-in-ukraine-during-the-war/

On February 22, 2022, Ukrainians woke up in a different world – one in which not everyone would manage to survive. Of course, there had been talk beforehand about a possible Russian invasion, but few people believed it – just as few people today believe in the possibility of a Russian invasion of other European countries. This is understandable: it is hard to imagine that, in a single moment, one’s entire familiar life could come to an end.

 

Studying in Ukraine: The First Days of the War

The morning of February 24, 2022. The wail of sirens filled the air over Kyiv, but no one yet knew what it really meant for cities to be bombed. It was still unclear what exactly to fear. How many of my acquaintances and friends would still be alive a year later? Kyiv residents were setting up camp in the metro, intending to spend the night there, naively believing they could wait out the war underground. One acquaintance of mine wanted to leave Kyiv with her friends and wait out the war in Bucha. No one could imagine that it was precisely there that the Russians would carry out a massacre. She was saved only by the fact that fighting had already begun there and she did not manage to get there.

I understood that the best thing to do was to continue carrying out one’s everyday duties and to find one’s mission. My mission is connected with my profession: to transform emotions into understanding, in order to help people overcome their fear of uncertainty. To do this, I returned home to Sloviansk, continued teaching, and began keeping a chronicle with philosophical reflections. By clarifying meanings, I could give people a point of support for understanding what was happening.

At that time, I was teaching my own online course – The Philosophy of Human Communication. Fighting was going on in Kyiv, and it was still unknown whether the city would hold, yet according to the schedule I had another lecture to give. Several female students from Sievierodonetsk joined the class. They had not yet recovered from the emotional shock. How was I supposed to lecture them? I tried to convey a sense of confidence, to demonstrate a rational attitude toward what was happening without excessive emotion. And they replied: “Russian planes are already above us. We’re in a bomb shelter.” The students were about twenty years old; when the war in Donbas began, they had been around twelve. The fragile balance between peace and war – that had been their entire life, and now that balance had collapsed into an abyss.

Later, one of the students found herself under occupation and said that time there seemed to have stopped in 2014 for the local youth. They were already over twenty, but their consciousness was like that of fourteen-year-olds. “If we,” she said, “are active in life – looking for jobs to support ourselves while studying, making decisions for ourselves – then the local youth are infantile. It wouldn’t even occur to them to decide anything on their own.”

 

The Mission of a Teacher and Philosopher During the War

After recalling the students, the Ukrainian government announced a break, so the next lecture took place only two weeks later. A relatively large number of students attended. My task was to conduct the classes in such a way that they would become an island of familiar life amid the chaos of war and serve as moral support for the students.

For this to happen, the students needed to trust me – to perceive me as someone who shared all the dangers with them here in Donbas, not far from the front line; someone who differed from them not in social status, but in life experience. In a situation where death is close, one persuades not with words but with one’s example. That is why I tried not only to speak, but also to demonstrate inner calm and a readiness to act, maintaining confidence in my decisions and actions no matter how terrifying the external circumstances might be.

In such circumstances, people need someone nearby who can demonstrate this confidence. Neither comforting talk nor formal teaching as if nothing had happened is acceptable here, for that would be a sign of inadequacy. As a teacher, I needed to show that I understood the students, that I accurately assessed the horror unfolding around us, and that in any situation I could offer a rational strategy for action and was prepared to take responsibility for my decisions.

 

Classes During Shelling

The next class began. We exchanged information about the situations each of us was facing. A student from Lyman said that things were quiet there, even though a powerful explosion had just sounded very close by. In response, I said that things were also quiet in Sloviansk, although the previous day the sirens had been blaring constantly; the day before that, there had been cannon fire and missile explosions all day long, and one of the missiles had struck very close to my home.

And so, having exchanged updates, we began the class. I needed to connect my lecture to the new reality, and this time I chose the topic of lies. The internet connection was unreliable, since electricity was often cut, but I had written to each student in advance via private chat that we could stay in constant contact there.

A student from Lysychansk, who lost her internet connection during the class, later sent the following message:

“It’s quite scary in Lysychansk. My home is near one of the main roads. When vehicles pass – anything from cars to tanks – you can hear them very, very clearly, especially because the road has been destroyed by tanks. Shelling happens very often and is extremely loud. There are neighborhoods that have been completely devastated. Many people have had no water, electricity, or gas for two weeks now. It will take a long time to restore all of this.

The primary school where I studied is half destroyed. Heavy equipment is constantly stationed near the gymnasium where I went to middle school. Because the house where I live now is relatively close, every shot from near the gymnasium is felt extremely sharply. Near the lyceum where I attended high school, a shell fell in the very first days. No one ever figured out whether it was part of a launch mechanism or an unexploded shell.

Going outside is extremely dangerous – even to the shop across the road. Heavy fighting is underway in Rubizhne right now. From our side, there is intense and constant fire directed toward it. Cities are burning. In areas where friends once lived, there are practically no houses left.

Most roads are mined; railway tracks have been blown up. Now the question concerns the bridges. As soon as the Armed Forces of Ukraine begin to withdraw, the bridges will be destroyed – they are of strategic importance. Trying to leave now can be compared to the agony of an animal driven into a corner. There is an enormous amount of false information, a flood of fakes concerning civilian evacuation. You don’t know where you might gain something and where you might lose everything.

Today, acquaintances left for Svatove in an evacuation convoy at 8:30 a.m. As of now, there has been no contact with them. It is unknown whether they arrived – or whether they are alive at all…

I apologize for not responding during the class. It’s hard to get even a more or less stable internet connection in the basement.”

It is the third month of classes. The Russians have captured Sievierodonetsk, Lysychansk, and Lyman and have approached Sloviansk, where I live. A student who evacuated from Lyman asks how Sloviansk is being shelled and compares it with how his city was shelled before it was captured:

“First they shelled the hospital and the House of Culture, and then regular artillery duels began, and all life-support systems in the city stopped. As a rule, the shelling went on continuously from four to ten in the morning. Then there was a lull during the day until six in the evening, after which it resumed again until one in the morning.”

 

An Attitude Toward Life That Gives Strength

I continued to choose lecture topics in response to the questions raised by the war: duty, responsibility, attitudes toward evil, and so on. However, the topic that aroused the greatest interest was love between a man and a woman. It was discussed passionately even by those attending classes while under shelling. Despite the war, the younger generation lives inwardly in the peaceful future of Ukraine.

I also shared personal reflections with the students. When I was teaching in Tomsk (Siberia), I was once offered a strategy for building an academic career: to write grant applications, travel to Moscow, cultivate connections with influential scholars, and thereby increase my authority and social status. Some of my colleagues followed this path. They gained recognition – and are now forced to adapt to the regime in Russia against their conscience. Had I done the same, I would have lost my philosophical talent.

There is a fundamental difference between a philosopher and a specialist in philosophy. A philosopher articulates lived experience. And when there is a war, a philosopher cannot avoid speaking about the experience of war – otherwise, they cease to be a philosopher. For philosophical self-realization, I need only free time to write and the opportunity to live through, together with everyone else, the experience I reflect upon. In frontline Sloviansk, I have all of this. My successful colleagues in Russia do not.

The war has revealed that the struggle for recognition, social status, academic careers, and authority is nothing more than an illusion – a mirage. The authenticity of life is revealed in its intrinsic value, when one acts in accordance with oneself. That is what I tried to convey to the students in my lectures.

 

Studying in Ukraine: Students’ Testimonies

Ukrainian youth is diverse. Some are politicized; others are not. They have very different interests, but there is something that unites them all: they are oriented toward the future, and at the same time they see no future whatsoever with Russia. They do not watch television and perceive the war not through the prism of politics or ideology, but realistically – as it manifests itself in everyday life.

I was once again convinced of this when I spoke with them during assessments and exams. Below are excerpts from these conversations, with minor stylistic editing that does not alter their meaning.

From an occupied district of Luhansk Oblast

– I managed to get in touch with difficulty. I have local registration, so they are not letting me leave the LPR – mobilization is under way.

Note

    LPR – so-called Luhansk People’s Republic.
    DPR – so-called Donetsk People’s Republic.
   These are the names used by Russian authorities and pro-Russian separatists for the puppet administrations in the occupied parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.

From Ukraine, after evacuation from Mariupol

– We could have been killed many times. I can’t talk about it. I can’t promise that I’ll ever be able to tell it…

From Svitlodarsk (under occupation)

– I am in Svitlodarsk. Since May 24 we’ve had the DPR, and since May 29 there has been no communication at all. Only now have I managed to get in touch for the first time. There is nothing in the city – no water, no electricity, no gas, no internet. The fact that I somehow managed to catch a signal is a miracle.

From Ukraine, after evacuation from Lyman

– On April 22 there was the first heavy shelling. At about five in the morning, the Donetsk Regional Trauma Hospital – which had been relocated to Lyman in 2014 – was hit by an Uragan multiple-launch rocket system. There was a fire, and neighboring houses were damaged. It was especially intense on the night from April 30 to May 1: shelling began at 8 p.m. and continued until about 1 a.m., then resumed again at 4 a.m. You could hear the sound of metal fragments from shells scattering across the city. Closer to noon it quieted down somewhat, and it became clear that the pedestrian bridge between the southern and northern parts of the city had been destroyed, apartment buildings and garages were damaged, and the railway station was left without windows. In the following weeks, the situation in the city only worsened; food supplies were running out, and people were exhausted by the constant roar and ongoing destruction…

From Novopskov (under occupation)

– I’m at home in Novopskov. It seems quiet here, but aircraft fly over every day, military equipment moves around – it’s very frightening.

From Kurakhovo

– I see no logic at all in the shelling. People were training at the stadium, and after they left, a missile struck it.

From Ukraine, after evacuation from Mariupol

– On February 24, Russian troops entered Ukraine. I remember that morning – the horror that reigned everywhere. From early morning, the occupiers began bombing the outskirts of Mariupol. People tried en masse to leave the city, but even then it was already blocked. Everyone rushed to withdraw cash and buy food. There was terror in people’s eyes; everyone was afraid of what would come next. Everyone was afraid of war.

I lived in the private housing sector of the Illichivskyi District. When shelling began in the Eastern District, we hid in the basement. The ground was shaking, and with it our house. Time seemed to stop. That was the first time in my life I felt that my loved ones and I could die.

All the days that followed were the same: air-raid sirens, the basement, explosions. Fighting was taking place just a few kilometers away and soon spread to the Illichivskyi District. That was when we decided to leave the city.

It so happened that we were leaving during an air bombardment. Even then, the Illichivskyi District was already in ruins – destroyed houses, burned-out cars. But the worst was still ahead. When our car reached a checkpoint, we were advised to turn around and go back because it was too dangerous. I remember my mother saying that we had to leave immediately. We – and everyone behind us – were let through at our own risk. We prayed, asking God to give us a chance to live.

That day, under bombardment, we got out. What I saw can never be forgotten: burned and shot-up cars, trucks, and military equipment… and bodies – rather, what was left of them. There were so many that my sense of reality disappeared. It was as if I had fallen into a trance. It felt like a nightmare.

My family and I left Mariupol on March 10. On March 11, as if erasing our past, a shell destroyed our home.

From Okhtyrka

– On February 24, at around 1:30 p.m., a small Russian column entered the city; it was deliberately allowed to pass through and was later destroyed somewhere out in the fields. The main fighting began on the 25th: vacuum bombs, Grad multiple-launch rocket systems, artillery, aviation, and more.

The city’s key infrastructure was completely destroyed: the combined heat and power plant and the railway station. The city center was badly damaged – the city hall was destroyed, and the House of Services, the House of Culture, and the museum were damaged.

Most residents left en masse almost immediately. In April, it was relatively quiet, but around mid-May there was a missile strike on a military facility – and a kindergarten was hit as well. Someone had informed them that weapons were being stored there, but everything had been removed three days before the strike, so it was completely pointless.

Since then, it has been calm in the city, but the border villages are constantly terrorized. Shells mostly land in the fields, deliberately, so that nothing can be sown.

From Oleksiievo-Druzhkivka

– Today there was shelling of neighboring towns (about 10 km from my settlement), and all communication was completely cut off.

From Ukraine, after evacuation from Mariupol

– I simply have no strength left for studying. My life has been knocked out from under my feet and continues to slip away even now. Since February 24, there has not been a single bright day in my life. I spent a month in Mariupol – from the beginning of the war until March 24. There we lost everything: our apartments, cars, and business. We were deported to Russia. It took us 25 days to get out of that hell so as not to remain there… Two weeks ago, I was told that my brother, who was at Azovstal, had been killed. And I cannot even bury him.

From Kharkiv

– On the 5th – I don’t remember the month, I think it was May – it was coming in all day. I was twice under direct shelling. Shrapnel flew past my face; my sneakers were torn apart.

It’s hard again in Kharkiv. Yesterday there were explosions in Saltivka. But that’s Saltivka and Novi Domy. Those who live on the other end of the city, in the Lysa Hora area, say things are more or less okay there. But overall, shelling comes every night, mostly from Belgorod. That’s been going on for a long time now. There are air-raid alerts almost constantly. They start firing from Belgorod around 11:00 p.m. Tonight, they’re shelling again too.

Conclusion. Thus, over the years of war, a generation has grown up that does not remember a time when Russia was not an enemy.

Nikolai Karpitsky. Russian Occupation Means Repression Based on Identity: Testimony of a Resident of Kherson

Source: PostPravda.info 04.03.2026.
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/frontline-stories/russian-occupation-repression/

Kherson. Rally against Russian occupiers on March 13, 2022. A frame from a video chronicle. YouTube

“I would rather live in Germany under Putin’s rule than live in wartime conditions,” a 19-year-old German said in the studio of the ARD television channel in early October 2025. In his opinion, Ukrainians should surrender because life during war is supposedly far worse than life even under Putin’s rule. Behind the statement of this young man lies a widespread misconception: that Russia is waging this war purely for political reasons – to change state borders and spheres of influence. The failure to understand that this is an existential war for the right to exist creates the illusion that Russia can be negotiated with through concessions.

Perhaps Germans like this young man believe that Russian occupation would resemble life in the GDR under Soviet control. Perhaps people in Ukraine once thought that rule from Moscow was not so terrible – after all, they lived under Brezhnev. However, life under occupation is not “like in the Soviet Union,” nor even “like in present-day Russia.” It is far worse.

The occupation regime can only be compared to a Russian prison colony, or a “zone,” as it is called. There are “red zones,” where absolute power belongs to the prison administration, and “black zones,” where criminal bosses rule. Now imagine several regions turned into one vast “zone,” where the administration, together with criminals, creates total lawlessness. That is what Russian occupation looks like.

I cannot speak for others, but I will speak for myself – as a resident of Sloviansk, a city that some Western politicians would be willing to “hand over” to Putin for the sake of an illusory peace with Russia. Quite recently, FAB-250 aerial bombs destroyed several buildings not far from my home. This has become so routine that it is no longer a reason to write about it on Facebook, where I usually share my thoughts, or to interrupt my household chores. Yet I understand that things will only get worse. But even if Russian aerial bombs were to destroy half of Sloviansk, I would still have a 50 percent chance of survival. If Sloviansk were occupied, however, there would be no chance at all. That is why, for me, occupation is worse than living under wartime conditions. But this is only my personal perception.

I discussed this issue with residents of Kherson who lived through the occupation. Among them is Oksana Pohomii, a civic activist and volunteer. She has lived her entire life in Kherson, including during the occupation, and in 2020 was elected as a deputy to the Kherson City Council. I will present excerpts from our conversation to show what occupation actually looks like.

Occupation Means Legal Arbitrariness and Total Control

“The worst thing that can happen in life is occupation, – says Oksana Pohomii. – Because your freedom is taken away, even if the security services have not come for you personally. Before, we had jobs. But then you either work for the occupiers, or you do not work and are left without any means of survival.

The Russians exerted constant psychological pressure, pushing people to collaborate. For example, they dragged a woman – the head of one of the art schools – straight out of her home. They held her all day and forced her to sign a consent to cooperate. As soon as she was released, she immediately left the occupied territory.

Until the end of April, we still had mobile communication, but then it was cut off. There was no connection at all. A signal could be caught only in one place in the city center – people gathered there just to send at least a text message to their relatives. Later, communication was briefly restored, but at the end of May it was shut down again. Only Russian SIM cards were sold. The internet helped a lot: some providers continued operating.

Searches always happen unexpectedly – and that is truly terrifying. Friends reported that an armored personnel carrier was on a neighboring street and that the rashists were combing through one block after another. Our block was next the following day. I tied a scarf and put on glasses so as not to stand out. Four soldiers came to conduct the search. Their attention was distracted by our grandson Mykyta – that saved us: they did not look where the supplies of our volunteer organization were stored. One of our girls was searched several times – she lived in a settlement, in a private house.”

How the Residents of Kherson Reacted to the Occupation

“When the invasion began, I still did not know that we would be surrendered so quickly, – Mrs. Oksana recalls. – I thought there would be some resistance. I wrote on Facebook that we were gathering for a rally – my husband, our volunteers, and I, people we had worked with since 2014. We had been with them in Avdiivka, Marinka, Krasnohorivka, and Shyrokyne. We also announced that we were collecting clothes, medicines, instant food, cigarettes, and toiletries for the wounded. At first, we collected items in the lobby of the city council, but already on the second day – February 25 – there was no more space, so we moved to the district council building and later packed the aid kits elsewhere.

The first rally took place on March 5. Our volunteer group was helping Ukrainian soldiers with target coordinates, and I did not want to put people at additional risk, so I asked them not to come to the rally. I myself was already on my way to pack food supplies when a friend called and said, ‘There are so many people here! You can’t even imagine!’ Then I turned around and rushed to the rally. Later I realized: it was our ‘herts’ – we went out unarmed against fully equipped soldiers with assault rifles and shouted at them, ‘You were not expected here! Get out!’”

 

‘Herts’: Kherson residents confront Russian soldiers. A frame from a video chronicle. YouTube

The word ‘herts’, which Mrs. Oksana used, has no direct equivalent in other languages. It refers to a kind a Cossack tradition in which, before battle, the bravest warriors would ride out before the enemy army, mocking it and challenging it to single combat.

“March 13 was the day marking the liberation of Kherson from the Hitlerite occupiers, – she continues. – That day there was a very large march. The soldiers fired over our heads, but people still walked from Freedom Square to the Embankment. There was a Ukrainian flag one hundred meters long there – someone had sewn it! There was such an emotional uplift, such euphoria, that at that moment we forgot about fear. They thought they had come to a pro-Russian region, but in reality, it was not so. When we came out – and not only Kherson, but also Hola Prystan, Kakhovka, Nova Kakhovka, Kalanchak, and Skadovsk – with flags, shouting, throwing ourselves at tanks, something must have clicked in their minds: we were not going to become Russia… I don’t know, but I hope it clicked.

We spent a lot of time walking in the evenings, visiting friends and like-minded people, talking – because otherwise it was impossible to survive. You walk down the street and see that someone has tied a yellow flower and a blue flower together and hung them on a tree – and you understand: we are not alone. There are other people. As you walk, you look for these blue-and-yellow signs and believe that Ukraine will return. And we were lucky – we were liberated.”

Occupation Means the Agonizing Expectation of Reprisal

Not only the repression itself is terrifying, but also the constant threat – the expectation of punishment. Mrs. Oksana recalls:

“It is frightening to live in such a state, when you don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I constantly carried a small backpack with a toothbrush, soap, and a change of underwear in case they suddenly took me away. Only later did I realize: what backpack? They put a bag over your head, take the backpack away – and you are left with nothing. If you tell Russians all this, they won’t understand; they’ll say, ‘You could have just kept living! People can adapt to anything!’ But here someone else decides everything for you – they might, for example, step into a minibus at a checkpoint and say, ‘I don’t like you – get out!’ They felt like masters of life. If you did not submit, they could do anything to you.

The first month everything was closed, and then the market opened. There is one image that will stay in my mind forever. It was before May 9. I was going to the market looking for Ukrainian food. An open truck was slowly driving nearby, and in it was a prisoner on his knees, bare-chested, with a bag over his head. That was when it became truly frightening.

During the March 5 rally, the occupiers photographed participants from the regional administration building. A young man, Artem, was identified from one of the photographs and taken away ten days later. He was on his way home when they seized him. They shot him in the leg, dumped him near a hospital, and said, ‘You’re lucky.’ And that was still relatively mild – later things were much worse. During the occupation, he was taken to the ‘basement’ twice more.

When you constantly hear that one person after another has been taken away, you begin to understand how different reality is from expectations. We did not think it would be so terrifying until we began hearing from friends who had been held in the ‘basement’ about the abuse and torture that took place there.

People were taken to torture chambers – these were not prisons in the usual sense, where food, water, and access to a toilet are provided. It was simply a room crammed with people. Whatever you were seized in – underwear and a T-shirt – was what you remained in the entire time. No parcels were allowed. Once a day, you were taken out to fill a bottle with water and use the toilet. And they tortured, tortured, tortured… You constantly heard the screams of other people. Relatives of those arrested could not find out where their loved ones were being held. You would come to the commandant’s office and be told: ‘We don’t know.’

 

Russian Occupation, Kherson. People were tortured in this room. Kherson, November 14, 2022 by Media Center Ukraine

In one case, parents were arrested after it became known that their son served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. ‘We’ll release you when your son comes,’ they were told. The mother was eventually freed after a month, the father after two. He had been a sturdy, handsome man, but when he was released, he looked like an old grandfather. That was how much he had changed in just two months.

During the first week, FSB officers were not visible. Around March 10–12, they appeared and began systematically visiting addresses. From that moment, people started being seized. There were cases when Ukrainian soldiers and members of the territorial defense were captured, and later their bodies were found bearing signs of torture. The occupiers had lists – all the addresses. For example, a woman who had long ago worked in the prosecutor’s office or a court would be visited and pressured to collaborate, even though she was already 70 years old and suffering from dementia. This means the lists were outdated – which in turn suggests they had been prepared long in advance, even before 2014.”

How Putin’s Nazism Differs from Hitler’s

Not only Mrs. Oksana’s account, but also the testimonies of other people who lived through the occupation, confirm that behind the word “denazification” lies Russia’s own Nazi-like policy in the occupied territories.

In one form or another, discrimination on national grounds exists in many countries, including democratic ones. The difference is that democratic states possess legal mechanisms to combat discrimination. What the Russians carried out in the occupied territories was no longer discrimination but repression.

For example, banning the publication of a newspaper in one’s native language is discrimination, whereas arrest and torture for using one’s native language is repression. Restrictions in hiring based on nationality are discrimination, but treating the expression of one’s national identity as terrorist activity is repression. It is precisely this distinction that provides grounds for describing Russian policy in the occupied territories as Nazi in character.

However, there is a fundamental difference between Putin’s and Hitler’s Nazism. The Nazis under Hitler defined Jews according to a biological criterion. Putin’s rashists regard Ukrainians as enemies not by birth, but by self-identification. If a Ukrainian does not demonstrate a Ukrainian identity, the rashists by default consider that person “Russian.” This possibility of mimicry has given some people a chance to survive. Jews in Nazi Germany had no such chance. On the other hand, while Hitler’s repressions were systemic and orderly, rashist repression is chaotic and arbitrary, requiring no pretext. Therefore, anyone can become its victim, regardless of whether they consider themselves Russian or Ukrainian.

“Even if you submitted, they could still do anything to you – for example, because of the Ukrainian language, – Mrs. Oksana recounts. – Friends told us how a man was taken right off the street. He was going to feed a dog belonging to neighbors who had left. Soldiers asked him something, and he answered in Ukrainian. He was held for a week. What they did to him – he refused to say. He only said that now he and his wife speak exclusively Russian with each other. That was in September. Later they managed to leave through Vasylivka. They waited two weeks to be allowed through. To escape hell, they switched to the Russian language.”

Human rights and the right to identity

The struggle against Ukrainian identity inevitably turns into a struggle against human identity itself – against the desire to remain human. This is confirmed by the words of Oksana Pohomii: “Their goal is to kill the human being within a person. They took a group of people who had helped the Armed Forces of Ukraine and forced them to torture one another.”

Today, amid negotiations about peace in Ukraine, the parties discuss the political, economic, and military aspects of a hypothetical peace with Russia while remaining silent about the most painful issue – the human rights situation. In the occupied territories, fundamental rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are systematically violated: the right to life, liberty, and security of person (Art. 3); the prohibition of torture and degrading treatment (Art. 5); the right to recognition as a person before the law (Art. 6); protection from discrimination and equality before the law (Art. 7); the right to an effective remedy (Art. 8); freedom from arbitrary arrest or detention (Art. 9) and from arbitrary interference with privacy, home, and correspondence (Art. 12); freedom of opinion and expression (Art. 19); and freedom of peaceful assembly and association (Art. 20).

But there is one more fundamental right – not formulated in the Declaration, yet without which we cannot consider ourselves civilized people – the right to identity. No one should deny another person’s identity. Yet in the occupied territories, Russians do not merely deny Ukrainian identity; they repress everyone who recognizes it within themselves.

Nikolai Karpitsky. A Ukrainian View of the Peace Negotiations: If You Confuse War with Conflict, You May Mistake Capitulation for Peace

Donald Trump continues to exert strong pressure on Kyiv in an attempt to push Ukraine toward concluding a peace agreement. Living in the frontline city of Sloviansk, philosopher and public figure Nikolai Karpitsky writes that from Ukraine the situation looks as if the goal of the negotiations is not to achieve peace, but to ensure that Kyiv, Moscow, and Brussels do not fall out with Trump.

Translation into English of a publication on the Estonian portal Postimees 05.03.2026  https://rus.postimees.ee/8427168/nikolay-karpickiy-vzglyad-na-mirnye-peregovory-iz-ukrainy-esli-putaete-voynu-s-konfliktom-to-mozhete-kapitulyaciyu-prinyat-za-mir

 

Many people in the West morally support Ukraine. However, from a distance it is difficult to grasp the essence of what is happening in Ukraine. Only when you look the war in the eye can you understand the scale and the irrationality of the evil that Russia has brought with it. Evil that can be rationally explained is less frightening – for example, when the causes of war are sought in political conflicts, territorial disputes, or economic interests.

But this path leads to the false conclusion that one can reach an agreement with the aggressor by making concessions. Politicians in the West, the East, and the “Global South” often repeat as a mantra: let peace come to Ukraine even at the cost of territorial concessions – as long as people stop dying. This is also the position of U.S. President Donald Trump, who is trying to conclude a “peace deal.”

However, in Ukraine there are few supporters of such an outcome, because we are not fighting for territory but for the people who live on it and simply want to live their normal lives with all their everyday problems.

Ukrainians Pay for Every Day of Negotiations with Their Lives, Suffering, and Destruction

Trump could have provided Ukraine with enough weapons to deprive Moscow of any illusions about a quick victory on the battlefield and thus force it to sign a peace agreement. But the U.S. president preferred gradual political pressure. Since Ukraine does not possess nuclear weapons, lacks sufficient resources for a counteroffensive, and is in a weaker position, the main pressure is being exerted on it.

Does Donald Trump understand that Ukrainians are already paying for these negotiations? As soon as delegations began negotiations in January 2026, Russia intensified strikes on civilian facilities and residential neighborhoods, seeking to freeze the country by destroying its energy infrastructure.

However, at the end of January, something resembling a miracle occurred: Trump stated that he had asked Vladimir Putin not to strike Ukraine’s energy system for a week because of the cold weather. It sounded like fantasy – and it proved to be fantasy. At the height of the cold spell, Russia launched a massive strike on Kyiv, leaving the city without electricity and heating.

Afterward, Trump said that this was exactly how it had been agreed: the moratorium began during a thaw and ended at the height of the frost.

From Ukraine, it looks as though the United States together with Russia is putting pressure on Volodymyr Zelenskyy, forcing him to agree to completely unacceptable terms of capitulation.

War or Conflict

Although Donald Trump speaks about the Ukrainian-Russian war, in his efforts to achieve peace in Ukraine, he is trying to use the same tools that might apply to conflicts such as those between Pakistan and Afghanistan or Thailand and Cambodia. The American president believes that it is always possible to make a mutually beneficial deal with the conflicting parties so that they will lay down their arms and begin trading with each other, earning “a lot of money.” However, for Ukraine this is not a territorial conflict like those between the countries mentioned above, but a real, long, and bloody war for survival.

An armed conflict is a way of resolving disagreements between political actors through the use of weapons and military equipment. It is appropriate to speak of a conflict when there is a dispute that allows resolution through mutual concessions. But if one side’s goal is the elimination of the other side, then this is no longer a conflict but a war of destruction.

The official doctrine of Russia is the elimination of Ukrainian statehood and the absorption of the Ukrainian nation into the Russian community. Therefore, from the Ukrainian perspective, calling Russia’s war against Ukraine a conflict is as mistaken as calling the Holocaust a conflict between Jews and the Nazis.

Donald Trump believes that arms supplies to Ukraine make it harder to push the parties toward mutual concessions. Vladimir Putin is also interested in the West continuing to perceive the war against Ukraine as a conflict, since this directly affects the scale and nature of military assistance to Kyiv. That is why Kremlin propaganda seeks to create the false impression among Western audiences that the issue concerns disputed territories and political disagreements rather than an intention to destroy Ukraine as a country with its own culture.

Western media and political leaders do not hesitate to use the term “war” when assessing what is happening in Ukraine. However, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi consistently refers to the war in Ukraine as a conflict, and many Indian media outlets follow the same terminology.

The same term, “conflict,” is used by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as well as by leaders of several countries of the so-called “Global South,” the heads of state of Central Asia, and Moscow’s military allies – Belarus, Iran, and North Korea.

The question of terminology in international politics is not merely a matter of word choice but a reflection of a country’s official position. Using the word “conflict” allows governments to avoid a clear assessment of Russia as the aggressor and to demonstrate a false neutrality – a stance above the fray. Perhaps in this way political leaders seek to distance themselves from accusations of providing military assistance or cooperating with Russia in ways that help Vladimir Putin finance the war.

The vote at the United Nations General Assembly on February 24, marking the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, clearly showed which countries regard the war as a conflict: 12 countries voted against the resolution, and 51 abstained. Among them were all the supposedly neutral states mentioned above.

Unfortunately, the United States was also among them. The 107 countries that voted in support of Ukraine made it clear to Vladimir Putin that they consider Russia an aggressor waging a full-scale war. Putin himself avoids calling the war in Ukraine either a war or a conflict.

For Putin, Ukraine Is Simply a Military Trophy

For Ukrainians, it is unacceptable to call a war for survival a conflict, because the very desire to survive cannot be a matter of dispute or compromise. For Vladimir Putin, the term “conflict” is also unacceptable, but for a different reason: a conflict presupposes the existence of at least two subjects, whereas he fundamentally refuses to recognize the subjectivity of Ukraine.

After all, a hunter does not consider prey to be a subject and therefore does not perceive hunting as a conflict between himself and the prey. Putin uses the concept of a “military conflict” only when threatening war against NATO countries.

From Putin’s point of view, the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian authorities lack subjectivity, and therefore negotiations about peace with them make no sense. He allows only the imitation of negotiations with a Ukrainian delegation. A direct meeting between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy would destroy the entire structure of Russian propaganda, which is based on denying Ukraine’s subjectivity.

For the same reason, Russia does not want to provide peace guarantees to Ukraine in the event of signing an agreement to end the war – because guarantees can only be given to a subject. But for Putin, Ukraine is simply a military trophy.

At the same time, Putin is also unwilling to use the term “war,” since the word frightens Russian citizens who have spent their lives believing they live in a peaceful country. Moreover, acknowledging that the war in Ukraine is indeed a war would entail responsibility for its consequences. Therefore, the Kremlin leader resorts to the euphemism “special military operation.” One of the few world leaders who appears to understand this is China’s leader Xi Jinping, who likewise uses euphemisms such as “the Ukraine crisis” or “the situation in Ukraine.”

The Goal of the War: The Destruction of Ukrainian Identity

Any recognition of Ukraine’s subjectivity contradicts the goal of the war that Vladimir Putin formulated on the very first day of the invasion and has never renounced. To describe this goal, the term “denazification” was chosen, but it was given a fundamentally new meaning: the elimination of Ukrainian identity and, as its key element, Ukrainian statehood.

Such ideas are also voiced in the public sphere, including in the State Duma of the Russian Federation, and are then implemented in the occupied territories. There, a person may be arrested and tortured simply for using the Ukrainian language. In Russia itself, anyone who transfers even a small sum to a Ukrainian charity helping civilians can be convicted as a “sponsor of terrorism.” Since the Russian authorities deny the Ukrainian people’s political subjectivity and their right to exist, from their perspective such actions are crimes.

The phrase “special military operation” is used to mask the true goals and nature of the war. In reality, Russia is waging a full-scale war, carrying out mass acts of terror against the civilian population of Ukraine – bombing residential neighborhoods and civilian infrastructure, and committing torture and killings in the occupied territories.

However, at the trilateral negotiations initiated by Donald Trump, the humanitarian dimension of the war is hardly discussed at all: there is no discussion of stopping attacks on civilians or protecting the rights of people in the occupied territories, above all the right to life.

From Ukraine, it looks as though the purpose of the negotiations is not to achieve peace but to ensure that Kyiv, Moscow, and Brussels do not quarrel with Trump. As a result, the negotiations are not substantive but resemble a kind of “business game.” The participants carefully discuss the technical details of a peace agreement in a hypothetical situation – if Vladimir Putin were to express a desire to end the war.

Undoubtedly, Ukraine desperately needs a truce to address many internal tasks, including those related to defense. But what it certainly does not need is an imitation of peace negotiations at a moment when Russia is preparing a spring–summer offensive against Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, which would open the way for an advance deeper into the country across the steppe zone, where defense is difficult.

And the Ukrainian people have no choice: if the Russian army stops fighting, there will be peace. If the Armed Forces of Ukraine stop fighting, Ukraine will cease to exist.

"Russian Imperial Consciousness". War Dictionary by Nikolai Karpitsky

Source: PostPravda.info 23.02.2025
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/dictionary-of-war/russian-imperial-consciousness/

How differently do Ukrainians and Russians relate to their own countries? Why, despite changes in regimes and ideological systems in Russia, does one thing remain constant – continuous military expansion? What is it in the structure of Russia’s imperial consciousness that prevents it from living peacefully with its neighbors? These questions are addressed by Nikolai Karpitsky in the article “Russian Imperial Consciousness” for the “Dictionary of War” on PostPravda.Info.

Russian Imperial Consciousness

Russian imperial consciousness originated during the period of the Muscovite Tsardom, when Russia was not yet an empire. Its foundation lies not in identification with one’s country as a shared destiny, but in identification with the authority to which people entrusted their fate. Russia’s socio-political system could change, yet the drive for expansion through military conquest remained constant.

The Country as a Shared Historical Destiny

The state is a social concept connected to a territory under the jurisdiction of a national legal system. A country, by contrast, is a cultural and historical concept encompassing the living space of a community united by a sense of shared destiny. Such a community may consist of a single people or of several peoples living together within a given territory.

A person perceives their country not only geographically – as a territory with a particular landscape – and not only socio-politically – as a system of government – but also existentially, as a shared historical destiny. In times of war, this sense of shared destiny manifests itself in a selfless readiness to defend the country and help others. In Ukraine, during Russia’s full-scale invasion, this was expressed in mass heroic resistance to aggression, the development of a volunteer movement, and the preservation of hope for liberation among people living under occupation. This feeling does not depend on attitudes toward particular political forces or on who happens to lead the state at a given historical moment. People may be critical of the Ukrainian authorities, yet this does not affect their existential perception of Ukraine as their shared destiny.

There is a fundamental difference in how Russians and Ukrainians understand their own country. For a bearer of Russian imperial consciousness, any territory under the control of central authority is considered Russia, even if it is historically the territory of another country. Therefore, for many Russians, the occupied territories of Ukraine are already Russia. For Ukrainians, by contrast, their country is a shared destiny rather than territory controlled by one authority or another; thus, Ukraine remains a single country as long as people preserve a sense of shared destiny with their compatriots under occupation.

The Sense of Shared Destiny

Destiny is a shared meaning that connects historical events with the events of personal life. In existential experience, destiny is felt as a sense of belonging to a social community that gives one’s own life new meaning and value.

Identification of a person with a social community is formed on the basis of certain characteristics. For example, a people may unite through language, culture, or religion; however, these features are not universal. One people may speak several languages, and different peoples may use the same language. The same applies to culture and religion. The indispensable feature without which a people cannot exist is a sense of shared destiny. Moreover, a person from another culture, speaking a different language, may come to a country and share a common destiny with its people. In this sense, a country is a land connected with the sense of shared destiny of a particular people.

If a social community is formed on the basis of ideology, this often leads to a totalitarian system in which discrimination or repression is directed against all those considered ideologically alien. By contrast, a community grounded in the existential sense of a shared historical destiny excludes totalitarianism. Understanding one’s country as a shared historical destiny presupposes recognition that people may hold different beliefs and that among them are those who interpret historical destiny differently and do not feel unity with their country.

After Russia’s invasion in 2014, volunteers from across Ukraine helped residents affected by aggression regardless of their political views or which side they supported. Even when certain residents of Ukraine placed greater trust in Russia, Ukrainian volunteers still regarded them as Ukrainians because they felt bound to them by a shared destiny. This example demonstrates that an existential sense of community with one’s country cannot be imposed. As soon as it begins to be forcibly imposed on others, it degenerates into imperial consciousness.

The Aggressive Form of Imperial Consciousness

Within imperial consciousness, a sense of community with the country is attributed to those who do not actually possess it. Yet what can be imposed by force is not a feeling but only an ideological attitude. Therefore, the absolutization of the sense of community as a norm obligatory for all can exist only in the form of an imperial political ideology. In this case, the absence of this feeling is interpreted as betrayal or a crime.

In its most aggressive form, imperial consciousness attributes a shared historical destiny not only to the entire population of its own country but also to neighboring peoples beyond its borders. In particular, Russian imperial consciousness ascribes to all Ukrainians a sense of community with Russia and, on this basis, denies Ukrainian identity, the Ukrainian language, and Ukraine itself as a separate country. Ukrainians who disagree with this are perceived as traitors to Russia and enemies to be destroyed.

Russians do not conceive of Russia as an ordinary country outside an empire. Therefore, the understanding of a country as a shared destiny does not apply to Russia itself. Among Russians, the image of Russia is shaped by an understanding of their shared destiny with an aggressive military empire whose existence presupposes constant expansion and requires regular human sacrifice. Russia’s war against Ukraine has posed an existential question for each of them: whether they will continue to bind their fate to the empire and central authority, or seek another form of shared destiny with the land on which they live. But to do so, they must overcome the fear of losing identification with the empire – a fear through which Russian imperial consciousness is continually reproduced. Only then does the possibility emerge for the formation of new identities grounded in a shared destiny with the peoples and lands forcibly incorporated into the empire.

Nikolai Karpitsky. Winter in Sloviansk: The Goal Is to Survive Together with Ukraine

Source: PostPravda.info 11.02.2026.
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/frontline-stories/winter-in-sloviansk/

“This is the hardest winter in Sloviansk in all the years of the war,” says Nikolai Karpitsky. He has spent all four years of the war in this frontline city. Specially for PostPravda.Info, he tells how a resident of Sloviansk endures the cold, which the enemy uses as a weapon.

Winter in Sloviansk: Cold as a Weapon

Russia uses not only bombs and drones against Ukrainian civilians, but also cold. Objectively, shelling is more dangerous than cold, yet psychologically cold is harder to endure. You eventually get used to the danger of dying at any moment: at first, when explosions go off nearby, it is deeply unsettling, but later you stop reacting. Cold, however, is something you can never get used to.

I live close to the front line, and here cold is compounded by another factor that breaks people — uncertainty. Everyone experiences it differently; I can only speak from my own experience.

January was bitterly cold. As the frost set in, Russia began deliberately striking Ukraine’s energy system, trying to freeze the country. The main blow fell on Kyiv. People in high-rise apartment buildings without electricity find themselves trapped: there is no light, no water, it is impossible to use the toilet properly, and the building gradually freezes through. Where utility services relied on luck and did not drain the water from the radiators, pipes burst.

While the enemy’s attention was focused on the capital, things were easier in Sloviansk, where I live — power outages were rare and short-lived. If electricity had been cut the way it was in Kyiv, my house would not have survived.

Typical private houses in Ukraine are not designed for severe cold, and when they were built, no one imagined the possibility of war. I live in one such house myself. The kitchen is in an extension, separate from the main building; the gas boiler that supplies heat to the house is located there as well, with a pipe connecting the two structures. If the electric motor stops, the water will stop circulating, and the house will freeze very quickly.

At the end of January there was a thaw, but at the market people anxiously discussed the abnormal February frosts expected the following week. And then Trump said he had asked Putin to suspend strikes on energy infrastructure for a week because it was very cold. It sounded like fantasy, but one desperately wanted to believe it — there was no “Plan B” for a prolonged power outage.

Putin waited for the peak of the frost, and on February 3 the Russian army struck with everything it had managed to accumulate during the days of the “truce”: according to Zelensky, 32 ballistic missiles, 11 other missiles, 28 cruise missiles, and 450 attack drones. Trump confirmed that Putin had kept his promise — because, as he put it, that was exactly what the agreement had been.

Without Heating at Minus Fifteen

The twenty-four hours from February 3 to 4 were the hardest for me in the entire war. At the same time, they reflected — like a mirror — my perception of the war over all four years. The electricity went out during the day, as suddenly as the invasion began on February 24, 2022. On the one hand, you understand that this can happen; on the other, it is psychologically impossible to imagine it as reality. And when it does happen, you find yourself in a completely different reality for which you are unprepared — whether it is war or a power outage at –15°C.

The first reaction is hope that it won’t last long. The house is still holding heat; the soup has been cooked. The same hope existed in the first days of the invasion: we just need to hold out for three days… ten days… and then a miracle will happen — Western aid, a counteroffensive, Russia will retreat. But the war goes on, and resources are gradually depleted.

Night falls, there is still no electricity, and it becomes clear that something serious has happened. The most tormenting thing is uncertainty. I live on the outskirts of the city and find myself in complete informational isolation. I don’t know whether this is a local accident or a global one. Perhaps the electricity will come back in the next second — or perhaps never. I had the same feeling during our counteroffensive in the autumn of 2022: you hope the war will end with a quick victory, but it is just as likely to drag on indefinitely.

You want to fall asleep and wake up when the lights are back on. I fell asleep and woke up many times, and each time it grew colder. I had to take another blanket and two throws. In the morning, I put on a fifth sweater and a jacket and walk around the house to warm up. The frost will last a few more days — it’s impossible to hold out without electricity until the thaw. This is what a war of attrition looks like: who will run out first — the aggressor or us? Russia has incomparably greater resources and a constant influx of volunteers ready to kill us for money.

I left the refrigerator door wide open — let the cold in the house be of at least some use. I heat the soup over a candle. The pot gives off heat to the room almost as quickly as it receives it, but after two hours the soup is warm at last. While I pace back and forth around the room, the cold is still bearable, but with each hour it gets worse. If the temperature in the house drops below freezing, the radiators will burst, and then it will make no difference whether you are inside the house or outside.

There has been no electricity for almost a day, and the uncertainty presses harder and harder. Perhaps the pipe outside has already frozen through… My mind is torn between the hope that a light bulb will come on any second and my imagination drawing an apocalyptic picture of war in which there is no longer any hope of survival. Now the main task is not so much to wait for the electricity as to preserve inner calm. To do that, I detach myself from the expectation of the “next moment” and focus on what is “here and now.”

Hatred creeps up toward everyone who supported Putin, especially toward my Russian acquaintances. If I let hatred inside me, I will simply dissolve in it. To distance myself from hatred, I look for support within myself, in the moment of the “here and now.” No matter how terrifying life may be, each concrete moment of life has value in itself, and I strive to live it fully — even if in the next moment I might die in my own home from a drone or a bomb. Along with hatred, I let go of expectations and of the picture of reality that my imagination draws.

Why is it impossible to get used to the cold? I can, by inertia, go about my daily business while bombs are falling, but to warm up I have to make additional efforts. I walk around the room to keep warm, but how long can I do that — one day, two? Cold cannot be endured by inertia.

By inertia, one can carry on with everyday tasks even in moments of danger, as long as those moments do not require a struggle for survival. This is how habituation to war arises. Analysts and publicists who paint an optimistic picture of future Russian failures and Ukrainian successes contribute to this habituation. In the first year of the war, this supported us and helped mobilize our mental strength. But war has another side as well: sooner or later it reaches everyone, forcing them to fight for their own life. It is impossible to get used to this, just as it is impossible to get used to the cold, because constant effort is required, and human mental resources are limited.

Goal-Setting: To Survive Together with Ukraine

What does it mean to live in the moment of the “here and now”? If you perceive this moment from within the flow of emotional experiences, no amount of strength will be enough to endure what every single moment of war brings. One can live it fully only by relying on goal-setting that depends neither on emotional states nor on external circumstances. Only this reveals awareness of one’s own existence in the moment of the “here and now,” and this existence has intrinsic value. From this follows the volition — to live this moment fully despite the cold, the war, and the danger of dying the next minute. This volition is embodied in the goal-setting of surviving in spite of everything. But not surviving at the expense of others — surviving together with others. In wartime, this means surviving together with Ukraine, regardless of how strong the enemy is.

This goal-setting gives strength and endows life with meaning. Even when there is no electricity or internet, when it is impossible to turn on a laptop and I am forced to walk around the room to keep warm, I can still do something for Ukraine — for example, compose in my head the texts of future publications.

Electricity was restored after a day. The pipes froze, but not completely — the water barely flows through them, so the house does not warm up. It is not yet so hard for me. It is much harder for people with elderly relatives and children trapped in high-rise buildings. More frosts and new power outages lie ahead. The struggle continues.

"Responsibility". War Dictionary by Nikolai Karpitsky

Source: PostPravda.info 05.02.2025
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/dictionary-of-war/personal-and-collective-responsibility/

What is responsibility, and how is a feeling of responsibility connected to recognizing a person as a free citizen rather than a serf or a slave? Why do some Russians acknowledge collective responsibility for the war, while others are outraged that responsibility for crimes of the regime – crimes in which they were not personally involved – is being attributed to them? To answer these questions, Nikolai Karpitsky, in another article of the “Dictionary of War” on PostPravda.Info, explains how personal and collective responsibility manifests itself.

Responsibility

Responsibility is manifested in a readiness to answer for one’s inaction, one’s actions, and their consequences, even if those consequences are shaped by circumstances beyond a person’s control. Guilt is a moral or legal evaluation of a person’s actions, implying moral condemnation or legal punishment. Responsibility, by contrast, is a person’s obligation to determine their attitude toward their past actions or toward circumstances that require certain actions in the future. Thus, guilt is possible only in relation to actions already committed, whereas responsibility can relate not only to the past but also to the future. For example, if an adult encounters a lost child, they become responsible for that child’s immediate future.

Since people tend to evade responsibility for their guilt, society has developed legal mechanisms to compel accountability.

Responsibility for factual guilt in the past is realized in a readiness to answer for the consequences; responsibility for the future is realized in actions; responsibility for others’ crimes, in which a person has become involuntarily implicated by virtue of place of residence or citizenship, is realized in expressing one’s attitude toward these crimes and their consequences. Therefore, ignoring a war of aggression unleashed by one’s own state is a manifestation of irresponsibility, for which a person bears personal guilt.

Only free and legally capable individuals can be aware of responsibility; therefore, to demand responsibility from a person is to recognize them as free and legally capable. Responsibility for the crimes of the state can be recognized only by specific individuals who represent it; if they refuse this responsibility, they lose the right to speak on behalf of the state. The demand that Russians take responsibility for Russia’s war of aggression and war crimes presupposes treating them not as slaves or serfs, but as citizens endowed with agency and free will. Refusal to take responsibility for the crimes of one’s own state means the loss of agency. Since this demand applies to all legally capable citizens of Russia, it presupposes the collective responsibility of Russians for the war.

Collective Responsibility

Collective responsibility for a war of aggression is the obligation to embody one’s attitude toward an aggressive war and its consequences in concrete actions. If personal responsibility is determined by a person’s own actions or by their involvement in the actions of others, then collective responsibility is determined by the situation and circumstances – in particular, whether a person is a citizen of the aggressor state, whether they live on its territory, and so on.

Involvement in the actions of others may be direct – when these are conscious actions aimed at supporting the war – or indirect, when a person goes about their own life, pays taxes, and may even, according to their convictions, oppose the war. However, through his daily activities, he unwittingly supports the state that is waging war. In both cases, responsibility is personal in nature, since it depends on the degree of a particular individual’s involvement in supporting the war. Thus, the degree of involvement of employees of military enterprises differs from that of pensioners, and so forth.

Collective responsibility is determined by circumstances – in this case, by the fact that Russia is waging war in the name of all Russians. Therefore, all Russians, including those who have left Russia and are not involved in the actions of the Russian authorities, nevertheless bear collective responsibility for the actions of the state. This responsibility may have moral, legal, political, and existential dimensions.

Collective moral responsibility obliges each citizen to define their moral attitude toward their own actions or inaction. If a person continues to live as though the war has nothing to do with them, the lived experience of those who have survived the war is devalued in their everyday life, which undermines the very possibility of communication with them. For this reason, many Ukrainians do not wish to communicate with Russians.

Collective political responsibility for the war extends to all citizens of the aggressor state, since they failed to stop their government from unleashing an aggressive war. This responsibility is manifested in consent to political punishment for the war: reparations, restrictions on the right to independently determine the fate of one’s country, partial or complete loss of state sovereignty, up to the dismantling of the state.

Collective legal responsibility for the war does not imply recognition of collective guilt and is manifested in the obligation of any citizen of the aggressor state to give an account of their own actions or inaction during the period of war for the purpose of legal assessment. Only if involvement in war crimes is established – for example, if a person programmed missile launches or conducted propaganda activities among schoolchildren – is the court obliged to determine the degree of their personal guilt and to assign punishment.

Collective existential responsibility for the war arises on the basis of identity and manifests itself in the form of shame for one’s country and community.

The Subjective Experience of Collective Responsibility

For some, collective responsibility evokes a feeling of shame; for others, a feeling of injustice because it extends to them as well. Many in Russia, including among those who support Ukraine, ask the question: “Why should I bear responsibility for the actions of Putin, whom I hate and who has ruined my life?” Some perceive collective responsibility as equating victims and executioners and ask: “Do the victims of Stalin’s Gulag bear the same collective responsibility for the crimes of the USSR as the executioners from the NKVD?”

However, Russia’s war against Ukraine is not being waged by isolated criminals but by the entire state system, which encompasses all citizens, including those who oppose the war. This causes people who do not support the war to feel shame for their country and for the crimes committed in their name. It is precisely this feeling of shame that leads to the awareness of collective responsibility.

Nikolai Karpitsky. The Existential Experience of War

Source: PostPravda.info 19.01.2026.
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/frontline-stories/the-existential-experience-of-war/

Existential experience is everything that shapes one’s attitude toward life, and for many people today war occupies a central place in that experience – especially for those who live in frontline areas. The existential experience of war includes not only what a person observes – bombardments, the collapse of vital infrastructure, destruction, and the loss of life – but also what they experience inwardly. However, inner experience acquires existential value only when hatred is overcome through intention, fear and inaction through action, and a sense of uncertainty and illusory expectations through a vision of the future.

The Existential Experience of War Is Not Mere Knowledge, but Understanding That Changes a Person

In 2022, I decided to remain in Sloviansk. The city was under constant shelling, but the prospect of occupation seemed far more frightening. At that time, I was checking frontline news three times a day: the situation was deteriorating dramatically, and it was unclear whether our city would survive. I could have moved to the rear or gone abroad, but this is my home. There was another reason to stay: only direct proximity to the war could give me genuine understanding, enabling me to write about it. Knowledge and understanding of lived experience are not the same. Knowledge is the possession of information. Genuine understanding – in other words, understanding in the existential sense – is the interpretation of knowledge through one’s own lived experience.

Hatred in the Existential Experience of War

Hatred. You are living your ordinary life – work, everyday concerns, relationships – and suddenly someone, for no reason at all, tries to kill you. An entire state is working toward that goal. You turn to acquaintances and relatives in Russia, but instead of words of support you hear accusations of Nazism and approval of the invasion. After February 24, 2022, many residents of Ukraine lost their homes, their jobs, and their loved ones, and for the fourth year now have been forced to struggle for survival. It is therefore unsurprising that an all-consuming hatred toward everything associated with Russia has arisen among them.

In the first months of the war, this hatred helped Ukrainian society to mobilize, but over time it became increasingly destructive. Hatred cannot be kept inside – it simply burns you from within. A need arises to release it, at least on social media. But posts filled with curses directed at the enemy are not read by the enemy. They are read by friends, to whom this hatred is transmitted.

Thus, passing from person to person, hatred grows like a snowball, while its intended target remains unreachable. Neither Putin nor his inner circle read our posts. As a result, the accumulated aggression begins to shift toward closer targets: first toward corrupt and incompetent bureaucrats, then toward Ukrainian politicians, public and religious figures who remain silent about problems, then toward those who respect them, and ultimately toward everyone who, in one way or another, has failed to meet your expectations. Arguments begin within Ukrainian communities and among pro-Ukrainian activists, and in this squabble the main enemy – Russia – recedes into the background.

Intention. Once you allow hatred inside, it takes complete control of you. That is why I internally distanced myself from this feeling and turned my work on a wartime philosophical diary into a practice of transforming emotions into understanding. Instead of hatred, what took root within me was the intention to fight until the complete victory over the aggressor state and the punishment of all those guilty of war crimes. Hatred is a passion that flares up spontaneously and suppresses human will. Intention is the directedness of one’s own will–it orders feelings and mobilizes strength.

The fourth year of the full-scale war is now underway. The situation at the front continues to deteriorate. Russia is increasing its military potential. Europe increasingly feels the real threat of invasion, especially Poland and the Baltic states. However, the scale of these threats does not affect my intention, because it depends neither on my psychological state nor on external circumstances. Only the form of struggle changes. For me, it is work with words.

Inner Experiences in the Existential Experience of War

Fear. In a frontline city there is no time to hide from shelling – and I have nowhere to hide. So when shelling begins, you simply hope that the next shell, drone, or bomb will not hit you. At first it is terrifying, then you get used to it, and the shelling no longer distracts you from working on texts, even when you hear the roar of an incoming strike that makes the windowpanes rattle. Right now, as I write these words, a powerful explosion has gone off very close by – the house shook, and sirens wailed in the street. The electricity went out for a moment but was immediately restored, and I can continue working.

Fear is experienced differently in the rear than near the front. Sometimes it seems to me that it is even scarier deep in the rear. When death is nearby, fear becomes very concrete: shelling begins – it is frightening; it stops – relaxation comes, as if nothing had happened. A person cannot live in constant tension; the psyche dampens emotions on its own. But the farther you are from the front, the more frightening the future and the uncertainty of the situation become. Fear grows diffuse and turns into a constant background of perception.

Uncertainty. I live on the outskirts of Sloviansk, where phone coverage is poor. Sometimes, after shelling, electricity disappears for a long time, and you don’t know when it will be restored – or whether it will be restored at all. Then you remain in the dark, with a drained laptop, unable to find out what is happening around you. The enemy may already be close – and you would not even know it. Only the cold of winter nights breaks this sensory isolation from the world. The pump that circulates hot water through the radiators cannot operate without electricity. If the temperature drops below zero, the pipes will burst (fortunately, this has not happened yet). It's in moments like this that the sheer horror of a future unknown sinks in – work at the computer had kept those thoughts at bay, until the lights went out.

Analysts’ forecasts rarely come true because it is impossible to calculate all the factors of war. We can only track trends – and right now those trends are very bad. But if the future is not predetermined, it can change despite even the bleakest expectations. There is always room for hope.

Inaction. No matter how exhausting work may be, inaction is far more frightening. In the summer of 2022, Sloviansk emptied out, and many of those who remained lost their usual occupations. You sit at home all day without electricity, with no way to distract yourself, simply watching your city being shelled. At the “Good News” Protestant church, an acquaintance told me: “I try to come here as often as I can because just sitting at home is unbearable.” Fortunately, I did not have this problem, because I was constantly working on texts. I knew I was doing important work and felt that I was taking an active position in life. That is why I reacted calmly to shelling and other difficulties, which become unbearable if you remain in passive contemplation. The most valuable thing in wartime is meaningful work that prevents you from sinking into inaction.

The Perception of the Future in the Existential Experience of War

Illusory expectations. When the front is close, you live one day at a time, without hoping for the future, and then you stop understanding people in the rear who live with illusory expectations. At first, everyone in Ukraine hoped for new weapons that would turn the tide on the front. Later, people counted on Russia running out of soldiers. A year and a half ago, when the Russians began advancing toward Pokrovsk, in Ukraine preferred not to notice it – everyone talked about local successes near Kharkiv and assured each other that the enemy would soon exhaust its offensive capacity.

When I said that there were no signs of exhaustion at all – on the contrary, that Russia’s military power was growing – my interlocutors reacted with extreme irritation, sometimes even aggression. After all, I was calling into question the illusions that morally sustained people. Yet the destruction of false hopes led to a painful disappointment. In this sense, it is easier for me near the front: no illusions – no disappointments.

Now, as the Russian army advances, the future looks bleak, and death is sometimes so close that it feels as if there is no future at all. Paradoxically, to bring it back, one must give up expecting it.

Distortion of perception and a passive mindset. The image of the future always diverges from reality. Moreover, the very expectation of the future distorts the perception of the present. Before the war, no one imagined that the future could be so terrifying, and for the sake of temporary economic gain Europeans, including Ukrainians, indulged a dictator instead of preparing for war. But even the war did not lead to universal awakening; it merely changed the nature of illusory expectations.

Expectation of a catastrophic future suppresses the will, while optimism in expectation leads to relaxation – and both prevent readiness for the future. In 2022, we waited: new weapons were about to arrive that would change the situation on the battlefield, and once we reached the 1991 borders, peace would come. Illusory expectations made it impossible to see that the war would not have ended regardless of the outcome of the counteroffensive, and that survival therefore requires preparation for a long war of attrition.

For many, their attitude toward the future is like a weather forecast – you accept it as inevitable. But if you absolutely cannot come to terms with it, you look for another, more optimistic forecaster… or military analyst. This forms a passive mindset. Its cost in wartime is excessive, and the future always turns out to be different from what we expected. An active mindset means that the future is not awaited but designed on the basis of one’s own decisions.

Vision of the future. Expectation always distorts the perception of the present. A vision of the future that is formed not from expectation but from an awareness of one’s own capabilities and intentions, on the contrary, allows for an adequate perception of the present. The future is not a fact given like a weather forecast, but a possibility that is constantly shaped by our decisions; it exists in our inner intention as the vector of our aspirations. This makes it possible to accept reality as it is, without reshaping it to fit illusory expectations. Instead, we change our internal priorities.

Reality is frightening: too much has been done wrong, too much theft and betrayal has occurred to expect victory over Russia passively. And there is no need to wait passively if there is an opportunity, within this frightening reality, to build an alternative project of the future – a project of victory over Russia. A vision of the future is not an expectation, but a system of priorities and a general vector of aspirations based on an understanding of reality without illusions.

Nikolai Karpitsky. Trilateral Peace Negotiations on Ukraine: Participants Seem to Be from Different Parallel Worlds

Source: PostPravda.info 27.01.2026.
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/freedom-of-speech-en/trilateral-peace-negotiations-on-ukraine/

The trilateral negotiations between Ukraine, Russia, and the United States on settling the war concluded on January 24, 2026, in Abu Dhabi. The parties agreed to continue the talks on February 1. But is peace possible if the sides fundamentally fail to understand one another – because they think differently and inhabit different worldviews?

The participants in the negotiations perceive reality differently

Before the war, Europe believed it was living in the same world as Russia – a world in which wars of conquest were impossible. On this assumption, it did not prepare for war and even helped Russia grow stronger. Europeans proceeded from the idea that wars are meaningless because property rights and borders are determined not by force, but by legal recognition.

For a modern, civilized person, it does not matter whose soldiers are present in a given territory: its legal status does not change as a result. If someone seizes another’s property by force, they still do not become its owner. In Russia, however, a different notion prevails: whoever has force owns the territory and everything on it. Hence, for example, the widespread belief that the United States fought in Iraq for oil. When I asked how that could even be imagined – after all, American soldiers themselves cannot pump oil; it would first have to be purchased – people simply did not understand the question. For them, the very idea that ownership does not depend on military presence was incomprehensible.

This difference in perception became clearly evident in 2014. Most Russians believed that Crimea became Russian because Russian troops were stationed there. From the standpoint of international law, this is not the case: legally, Crimea remains part of Ukraine, and only Ukraine has the right to make legitimate decisions concerning it. A telling example is that of Alexander Butyagin, a Russian archaeologist from the Hermitage Museum, who conducted excavations in Crimea without Ukraine’s permission and later traveled to Poland, where he was arrested on December 10–11. It never even occurred to him that, under European law, he was committing a crime.

Even after the occupation of Crimea and part of eastern Ukraine, Europe for a long time regarded what was happening as an anomaly and continued to believe that an agreement with Russia was possible. After all, even the USSR recognized the principle of the inviolability of borders in 1975, and the last attempt to annex another state – the Iraqi seizure of Kuwait in 1990 – ended in severe punishment.

Russian public consciousness, however, remains largely archaic. In it, force is more important than law, and therefore the aggressive ambitions of the Russian authorities are understandable, while Europeans’ faith in the rule of law is not. In this worldview, Russia has the right to any territories that ever belonged to it, and if it can send troops there, the territory is considered its own – regardless of international law.

Negotiations: A Search for Solutions within the Legal Framework, a Venue for a Deal, or the Legitimation of the Aggressor’s Gains?

Europe’s profound misunderstanding of Russia’s position led to its diplomatic defeat in February 2015 – the signing of the Second Minsk Agreements with the participation of France and Germany. Under these arrangements, Ukraine was supposed to hold elections in the occupied territories before regaining control of the border, and then legalize the pro-Russian armed formations it had previously repelled by force. France and Germany insisted that there was no alternative to the “Minsk format,” failing to understand that this was not a political dispute within the framework of law, but the seizure of a country in the barbaric, medieval sense of the word.

Today the question arises: what can Ukraine actually negotiate with Russia, which recognizes neither Ukrainian identity nor Ukraine’s right to exist? In reality – only a ceasefire, because the parties’ conceptions of peace are so different that agreeing on a full-fledged peace treaty is impossible. But even a ceasefire is not on the table: Russia continues its offensive, and the United States has done nothing to force the war into a positional stalemate, without which ceasefire negotiations are impossible. Worse still, the current U.S. administration has its own vision of the world order – different from both the Russian and the European ones – which has turned the prospects for agreements into a mirage.

Russia’s vision of the world order has rolled back to the Middle Ages: the world is ruled by violence and cruelty. The European approach is the opposite – it is based on law and values that matter more than expediency. Donald Trump’s worldview is also archaic, but not to the same extent: it more closely corresponds to the logic of the nineteenth century. Trump does not perceive values as foundational; he believes that the world order rests on deals based on advantage and that stability is ensured by the dominance of the strongest power. He does not want wars and tries to force the parties into agreements through pressure, seeing this as grounds for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Europeans do not understand Trump, and he does not understand Putin: can negotiations be effective?

Discussions about the terms of peace are taking place between parties that perceive reality differently. European leaders do not understand Trump and believe that he is destroying the world order. Trump, for his part, is convinced that he is proceeding from self-evident truths and believes that he understands Putin. But this is a mistake: Putin’s reality is even more archaic than Trump’s.

This misunderstanding is clearly visible in concrete examples. Europeans cannot grasp the meaning of a “Peace Council” led by Trump with a one-billion-dollar entry fee, especially when similar tasks are already performed by the UN. To them, it appears to be a substitution of international institutions with personal dominance. For Trump, however, international structures cannot stand above national ones, and the “Peace Council” is simply a deal-making club in which the host sets the rules and charges for entry.

Europeans are also perplexed by Trump’s claim to Greenland – the very fact of which calls NATO’s internal logic into question. Trump is convinced that the world rests on the right of the strong, and that his claim to Greenland, as the leader of the most powerful country, should be self-evident. He considers it unfair that only Putin, and not European leaders, acknowledges this. Within this logic, his demonstrative friendliness toward Putin becomes understandable: if Europe is a competitor in the Arctic, then Russia is a military counterweight to Europe, useful for pressure and deal-making.

Perhaps the strangest episode was Trump’s taking of the Nobel medal from María Corina Machado. This provoked ridicule, but Trump sincerely believes that the medal belongs to him and that this should be obvious to everyone, since it is precisely his strong leadership that, in his view, stops wars. Therefore, he feels obliged to take the medal so that no one has any doubts about it.

Ukraine proceeds from European values and a legal world order. Trump operates within an archaic nineteenth-century worldview; Putin’s is medieval, rooted in the era of the Muscovite Tsardom. What, then, are the chances of successful negotiations under such conditions? Some may exist, but the overriding priority remains the strengthening of Ukraine’s defensive capacity.