This publication is part of Ukrainian Voices, a Carnegie Europe project that sheds light on Ukraine’s political and social dynamics by highlighting the perspectives of local experts.
For the past eighteen months, the narrative about Ukraine has been primarily optimistic and commendable. Ukrainians have been working miracles and surprising the world. Ukrainian resilience and unity in the fight against Russia have captured global attention—an essential factor in garnering international support. But are resilience and unity sufficient for the future beyond the war?
Despite its accomplishments, Ukraine faces challenges that need attention in the country’s long-term reconstruction plans. Addressing these challenges is pivotal for Ukraine’s future growth and stability. In short, they are about supporting Ukraine in five areas: transitioning from heroism and survival to a long-term strategy; learning the lessons of the past; maintaining Ukraine’s agency and investing in development rather than aid; building capacity for dialogue and the management of diversity; and creating a transitional justice system.
My voice is rooted in a decade of activism in healthcare, education, and police reforms. At the same time, it comes from outside Ukraine: I have been living and working in Germany since the beginning of the war.
From Heroism to a Long-term Strategy
During over 600 days of war, Ukrainians have demonstrated heroism on a daily basis. Manifestations of this heroism have included deaths on the front line, record fundraising for the Ukrainian army, the bravery and professionalism of doctors and nurses under fire, the productivity and creativity of businesses operating in war, and the ability of Ukrainians to continue with everyday life between the air-raid sirens. This heroism has been astonishing in its scale.
Heroism is an individual act of courage. It is a quick release of personal energy aimed at overachievement at a particular point in time. But because humans are not robots, heroism often results in physical or psychological burnout in the best-case scenario—or death in the worst case. Heroism is possible in a short race, but not in a marathon.
Re-creating Ukraine’s security and reforming it across the board are marathon tasks that require endurance beyond heroism. Therefore, postwar programs will need durable approaches to help Ukrainians develop stamina and teach them to use long-term decisionmaking frameworks, move away from personal courage, and create institutions with functioning processes instead of relying on personalities.
The critics will say that there are many examples of people surviving in inhumane conditions, proving that short-termism is an acceptable approach to solving problems. This viewpoint is also an illustration that heroism had become the day-to-day norm in Ukraine. But it is one thing to survive, and another to live. Ukrainians are masters of survival and crisis management but inept when it comes to strategic planning in the form of setting long-term goals and predictable routines. Rebuilding a country goes beyond survival; the goal should be to create sustainable solutions and institutions for long-term living.
Learning the Lessons of the Past
At some point, Ukrainian society will have to address the weaknesses that existed before Russia’s 2014 invasion of parts of eastern Ukraine. Among these weaknesses are the military’s state of disarray, the insecurity of the country’s borders, the incomplete or unsustainable nature of reforms, the uneven development of civil society on the ground, and governance challenges in public administration and local governance.
These vulnerabilities have existed since Ukraine gained independence in 1991, and they cannot be fixed merely by optimism about positive dynamics in the country. Ukrainians simply do not talk about negative headlines and statistics, to avoid feeding Russian propaganda or adding to their own trauma and grief. Because of the war, self-censorship has become a natural part of the national discourse.
There is a risk that Russia will be blamed for all of Ukraine’s problems, so an honest and open debate is needed, however painful it may be. It is vital to create space for a genuine discussion of the current state of affairs with regard to the country’s postwar reconstruction. It may be uncomfortable, but realizing the depth of Ukraine’s internal problems can give hope for ways to solve them. And doing so will create demand for change.
Keeping Ukraine’s Agency and Investing in Development
In a sense, an excessive focus on Russia in the dialogue about reconstruction after or during the war deprives Ukraine of its agency: someone else—Russia, Western allies—will pay for everything. Such a narrative puts Ukraine in a passive position of the affected party, a recipient of benefits from outside rather than a creator of its own future.
Now, Ukraine risks being stuck in the role of an aggrieved party. The temptations presented by external aid flows are enormous. The short-term risks are inefficient use of funds and the spread of corruption. The long-term risks are a civil society spoiled by big money and a public administration weakened by the rapid absorption of funds. These adverse effects will increase distrust in the country.
Significant infrastructural investments should be accompanied by profound organizational change on the ground. For example, rebuilding schools and hospitals should go beyond repairing walls. In addition to restoring the physical infrastructure, Ukraine needs to change the quality of services and approaches in these institutions and systems. Otherwise, Ukrainians will receive the same obsolete pedagogy of the oppressed that prevailed before the full-scale invasion in 2022. The same outdated system, but in new facilities.
It is imperative to avoid mixing humanitarian aid with technical assistance and gifts with investments. Providing humanitarian aid in response to the justified acute needs of selected regions and people is critical. However, most projects should aim to support Ukrainians in managing the long-term challenges of the postwar recovery. This means development, not aid, and money for the long term, not the short term. It also requires unprecedented donor coordination to ensure that too much money from different pockets does not simultaneously fall on unprepared soil.
Building Capacity for Dialogue
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Ukrainians have shown incredible unity. They are united in their demands for a no-fly zone over Ukraine, supplies of weapons, and tighter sanctions against Russia. Ukrainians have buried their differences and unified against the aggression, but they also need to prepare for a return to democratic politics, with all its divisions.
Unity against an enemy does not automatically translate to unity for the future. In Ukrainian discussions of the country’s long-term strategy, visions of the future are often reduced to simplistic notions such as “For everything good, against everything bad.” These discussions often lack nuance, because this requires a dialogue of opposites and the ability to conduct it. Unity involves respect for differences among people and opinions. All of this is insufficient in today’s Ukraine.
Ukrainians need to increase their capacity to negotiate and build coalitions. Therefore, in addition to finding supporters, they need to learn to develop common ground with dissenters, unite around fundamental causes, and not expect sameness in their ranks. Unfortunately, many current internal struggles with dissenters often resemble Bolshevik methods: personally attacking, banning, humiliating, devaluing, or punishing those with differing opinions.
Ukraine’s political mainstream, radicalized by the pain of the 2013–14 Maidan protest movement, Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and parts of the Donbas, and the 2022 full-scale invasion, demands that Ukrainians adopt unanimous positions on extreme measures, such as the elimination of the Russian language from all spheres of life. In an illustration of the effects of this demand, a September 2023 poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that 45 percent of respondents had suffered language-based discrimination. However, reasonable solutions are rarely found when the diversity of opinions is excluded. Sound, sustainable solutions often lie at the intersection of different points of view, where both the majority and the minorities have a voice.
Therefore, all of Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction efforts must be sifted through four filters. First, a project or decision should increase the level of trust in the country. Second, the project needs to take diverse views into account. Third, the project must be transparent, clear, and well communicated. And fourth, the initiative should help increase the capacity for dialogue and cooperation among the parties involved in the implementation process.
Creating Space for Transitional Justice
There is massive demand for justice in Ukraine at this historical time. The bottomless pain caused by the war, multiplied by feelings of powerlessness, demands quick answers. There is a lot of energy in the topic of justice, and it is vital to channel this into restorative justice instead of resentment or bloody revenge. But with a dysfunctional judicial system and weak law enforcement, justice is hard to achieve.
Despite enormous public demand, even the egregious cases of violence and killings during the Maidan revolution have not been adequately investigated and prosecuted through the judicial system. War-related crimes committed in Ukraine may also remain unresolved. The lack of justice may legitimize new violence.
The realities of de-occupied territories open up new potential for collaboration that needs to be addressed. Ukraine’s future reclamation of annexed Crimea and the Donbas territories will bring even more challenges to the table, as there will be alleged traitors and collaborators to investigate. There has already been a case in which an elderly woman was sued for liking posts on the Russian social media network Odnoklassniki. Almost 200,000 people just in Crimea would have to be sued for collaboration, based on the current legislation.
There are many complicated decisions to face: not only whom to prosecute and for what, but also whom not to prosecute; likewise, which crimes must be criminally prosecuted, and which could be addressed with potential amnesties or lighter punishments, such as a ban on holding certain public posts. The current policy of comprehensive punishment for all will possibly affect hundreds of thousands of people. The country may drown in conflicts and dilemmas, while some might resort to mob justice. Ukraine must implement a transitional justice process that will allow Ukrainians to draw the lines between punishment, amnesty, and remembrance.
International prosecution of the war crimes committed by Russia should go hand in hand with enhancing local law enforcement and the capacity of the judicial system to address crimes. This means not only a lot of work for lawyers and investigators but also a lot of organizational development and political pressure for painful and long-overdue reform processes.
Conclusion
There are many different Ukraines. You can love one of them and be devastated by another. One village can be home to an environmental activist fighting to save the forests, a farmer pumping uncontrolled amounts of chemicals into the meadows, local hunters shooting wild animals, and ecovillage settlers building a community for their children. There can be a soldier who gives everything for the sake of victory, a volunteer who mobilizes enormous resources to help the armed forces, a military commissar who collects bribes from conscripts for falsifying mobilization documents, and a clerk who earns kickbacks on military procurement.
All of these people are on the Ukrainian side. They speak Ukrainian, wear shirts embroidered with Ukrainian emblems, and wave Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow flag. If you turn your attention and resources to one of them, another will stab you in the back. Any support or investment in Ukraine should consider the capacities, interests, and risks of all sides. Any investor should be fully aware of where their money is going.
In developing recovery programs, it is essential to remember these different Ukraines, judge people and projects by their deeds rather than their words, and consider four key principles. First, humanitarian aid should go hand in hand with development. Second, long-term phased programs should be prioritized over quick wins. Third, sustainability should be favored over speed—with the exceptions of critical relief and weapons and ammunition. And finally, research-informed programs should take priority over opinion-based initiatives. With these principles in mind, data-driven research on contemporary Ukraine can help Ukrainians make informed decisions about their domestic and international future.
Anastasiya Leukhina is a Ukraine Research Network coordinator at the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS).
Author’s note: I have written over one hundred op-eds, but none has needed as much precision, empathy, and sensitivity as this article. This text has gone through an unprecedented number of revisions. When my people die daily from Russia’s attacks, it is hard, and sometimes feels immoral, to keep the content intellectual, yet here I have given it a try.
