України слава стане поміж народами

In early 2011, when Europe was already very into it's crisis with no view of a miraculous exit, a German newspaper columnist wrote how unlikely it would be for countries to - once again - siege a war against one another and explained this by two reasons.  Firstly, the simple lack of financing and secondly the lack of sufficient men (and women) willing to militarily equip themselves to attack their neighboring counterparts. 

At the time that sounded like a harsh but very meaningful statement, as politicians and populations were - once again - commencing to severely blame and intimidate each other across borders for the wrongdoings impacting the lives they had hoped have had such a different course not so long ago.

I suppose from a relatively western point of view, the notion of war would deem any form of organized combat to be only hypothetically possible between people from different countries wherein perhaps the only modern variable would be the absence of geographical disputes.

Now the "west" expresses it is shocked by the deaths of people on Kiev's Maidan square.  I am afraid I cannot share the surprise and wonder if the many heroic combatants in Ukraine do. 

I have been extremely impressed with the organization, the discipline, the creativity even, whereby hundreds and then thousands of people equipped and trained themselves, volunteering into some sort of hierarchy pursuing very strategic thoughts on a day-by-day basis.  People could have indulged in guerilla type demonstrative actions, but chose to establish and expose themselves in a non aggressive manner to a threat which could have been substantially more mortal. Their Cossack forefathers will have been proud.

What is Ukraine today is as responsible for what has become Europe as it is for Russia and here too I sense that "western" or EU views hinting that what is a stake is an EU / Russian divide is somewhat poor assessment of what a brave and educated population is in pursuit of.

Politicians should be wary against an informed population which is disciplined and persistent enough to siege against politics or the lack and abuse thereof.