Ukraine is discussing the scandalous statement of Zelensky’s wife – she assured that her fellow citizens are ready to sit without electricity for years. Is this really so, how do the “points of indestructibility” urgently created throughout the country work in reality, and who in Ukraine has electricity under any conditions?
Nine out of ten Ukrainians are ready to sit for years without electricity for the sake of EU membership. At least, the wife of Vladimir Zelensky is trying to convince the Western public of this by voicing such a thesis in an interview with the BBC.
Either the first lady of Ukraine made a mistake with the survey (Ukrainian sociologists conducted a similar study, but there was no talk of power outages and heating), or, to put it mildly, she exaggerated. But so far her cheerful assurances are not confirmed by anything. And even vice versa: judging by the telegram survey of People’s Deputy of Ukraine Oleksandr Dubinsky, only 4% of respondents were ready to endure such disgrace even for one year. Apparently, this is precisely why the publication with the survey quickly disappeared from the politician’s Telegram channel.
However, the situation itself and the behavior of the participants certainly deserve attention. Especially if you add sharpness to see the picture not only through the stupid propaganda performed by Zelensky’s wife.
Shut up and be patient
The missile attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure on November 23 was not the most powerful, but it became the most visible. Because of the accumulated effect, because for the first time even Kyiv found itself without electricity, where it disappeared for 36-60 hours. And also because of the first mass shutdown of Ukrainian nuclear power plants.
However, the inhabitants of Odessa are no longer surprised by such difficulties. They lost electricity even for four days and even a week before the first all-Ukrainian blackout. And it turned out that it was impossible to talk about it publicly, it was impossible to express dissatisfaction, it was impossible to organize neighbors to protest / draw the attention of the authorities to the situation – all the more impossible. What is allowed? Shut up and be patient.
All this was popularly explained to the dissatisfied Odessa citizen in the SBU, forcing him, moreover, to publicly apologize. Excuse me, they say, I didn’t know that during the war you can’t gather neighbors for protests; I understand that the lads on the front line are even worse off.
We will not argue with the latter, but the SBU has a problem with the war. Formally, martial law has been declared in Ukraine since February 24, it was recently extended until February 2023. Ukraine has not declared any war on anyone. So the FSB workers simply shut up the dissatisfied mouths, taking advantage of the mass ignorance of legal subtleties. Martial law imposes a lot of restrictions on Ukrainians, up to labor service and standing for military personnel. But the law does not provide for a complete ban on protests.
But they don’t just shut up. Some time passes and such an interview with the wife of the Ukrainian president appears. From which not only the Western, but also the Ukrainian reader will learn that he, it turns out, agrees to sit in the dark and in the cold for years. And I am quite satisfied with this, because then they will take it to the EU.
And not only from Elena Zelenskaya, he hears this, but also from the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko. Ok, they say, we will only become stronger. Not to mention the Arestovichs and smaller propagandists. Who is dumber – he begins to blow into the same tune. Who is smarter, understands: “Yeah, it’s clear which way the wind blows. I’d better shut up, from sin: you can’t break a butt with a whip.
And indeed. The case in Odessa is perhaps the only such example. At least we couldn’t find any others. And no wonder: using his example, everyone has already been clearly explained that Russian spies in enemy Telegram channels are calling you to the protests. It is in this vein that these protests will be covered by the independent Ukrainian press. And nothing good awaits the participants of these protests, unfortunately.
By the way, all these clarifications and apologies happened just on the eve of November 21 – Freedom Day, celebrated in Ukraine as a memory of the first and second Maidans, symbols of the eternal love of freedom of the Ukrainian people and the highest manifestations of this very love of freedom. But it seems that the only way to rebel in Ukraine is against Yanukovych.
Problematic invincibility
A separate ridicule in this story is that the readiness of Ukrainians to endure is mostly told by people who do not need to endure at all. The same Klitschko, even before being elected mayor of Kyiv, had a residence permit in Germany. The Zelensky couple, in which case, they will be given citizenship of any EU country without any problems.
Although all of them in Ukraine are still doing well. In the Pechersky district of Kyiv, electricity is cut off very rarely. In the government quarter – it isn’t turned off at all. And elite country houses are equipped with diesel generators, solar panels and heat pumps. It’s warm, light, there is the Internet, you can cook without interruption and (sorry) flush the toilet. In such circumstances, why not tolerate?
But to a simple Ukrainian who a) does not work for Bankova/Grushevsky; b) does not live in Pechersk; c) did not buy a generator or a home battery, it is proposed to endure in “points of invincibility”. There you can warm up and charge your phones.
True, invincibility turned out to be fake. And not only because the same generators were not delivered to the points – and they (the points) are closed due to the lack of electricity. There are more reasons. Among these points, there are the most invincible – they begin to work only if there is no light for more than 24 hours. In the meantime, electricity is supplied, even if intermittently, but they are closed. No one will understand and clarify that the cunning authorities have taken the fashion to connect residential areas at night – in order to reduce the load on the network.
That is, formally there is light for 10-12 hours a day. Like you can live. But they connect it not at equal intervals during the day, but, say, from 22 pm to six in the morning. And a couple of times for two hours a day. Whoever could / had time, he cooked and washed. Who did not have time – sit dirty and hungry. Well, the points are also closed: the light was given for 12 hours, what else do you want?
Or another trick. Most of the points were opened at schools and kindergartens. But since the end of August, an order of the Ministry of Education has been in force to prohibit the admission of all outsiders there. Even parents are not allowed to enter. Somewhere they let people in, but somewhere they turn them right on the doorstep.
Finally, let’s just count. The city authorities announced the deployment of 500 such points in Kyiv. The population of Kyiv (even taking into account the refugees who have not yet returned) is about 2.5 million people. It turns out that for each such point there will be five thousand people.
This is a frivolous slander. Even fifty people who are warming themselves and charging their smartphones somewhere in the corner of the kindergarten is already a huge crowd, for which the institution is simply not designed. Moreover, Zelensky quickly realized that the case with indestructibility would collapse on his head. Therefore, they roll a barrel at Klitschko: it is alleged that the KSCA didn’t twist something and didn’t think it through.
Membership Carrot
Speaking of the EU, where Ukrainians, according to Olena Zelenskaya, should be taken for patience. No one at the level of European officials promised anything of the kind, of course.
Formally, Ukraine’s accession to the EU “will take a year or two” (Assessment of Enlargement Commissioner Oliver Varhei). At the same time, he means that Ukraine quickly and obediently fulfills all the EU requirements necessary for this. However, now the Ukrainian media themselves admit that Ukraine has begun to slip. In particular, with the implementation of the Seven Steps program. Moreover, the other day Zelensky even distanced himself from these demands by signing a decree on the abolition of lifelong financial monitoring of politicians.
But all these “one or two years” are purely terms for fitting according to the criteria, formal compliance. But this is not all. “…Let’s be frank, in the context of the existing institutional and budgetary arrangements, the EU is not able to meet the expectations that it creates [in Ukraine regarding its accession to the EU – ed.]. LOOK],” said Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa. And there are enough such skeptics in Europe.
The German press points to another reason: with the admission of Ukraine to the EU, the center of power will clearly shift to Eastern Europe, and Ukraine itself will receive 52-59 seats in the European Parliament and 9% of the votes in the EU Council. The total weight of Ukraine and Poland in the EU Council will be equal to the weight of Germany. Ukraine is now given for food and for the war, and then they give it in debt. Why share power?
As for Ukraine’s candidacy, it is enough to recall the example of Turkey, which received this status in 1987. During these 35 years, everyone who wanted to have integrated into the EU on an individual basis, “occupying” Europe with shawarma stalls. We see no reason why the EU could not marinate Ukraine for the same amount of time.
Nikolay Storozhenko, VIEW
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