Russia’s invasion tears Western security myths apart

January 10, 2025

By Ukraine

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When millions of Ukrainians woke to explosions on 24 February 2022, it marked more than just the start of war — it heralded the collapse of everything we thought we knew about the 21st century world.

For two years since that fateful morning, we’ve conducted hundreds of interviews with Ukrainians who endured Russia’s invasion — testimonies that became Dark Days, Determined People. Each account lays bare the fragile facade of our modern world, revealing how quickly the veneer of civilization crumbles under an invader’s appetite for destruction.

A millionaire banker retrieving his son’s unrecognizable body; a young widow arranging candles at her husband’s grave; a factory owner turned serviceman, haunted by the faces of fallen soldiers he retrieves from the battlefield — these are just a few among millions of Ukrainians who have realized how fragile our reality truly is when the brutality of invasion tears its certainties apart.

The day the modern world began to crumble

When Russian troops crossed Ukraine’s sovereign borders, they destroyed more than just geographical lines, shattering the West’s core beliefs about security, privacy, and civilization itself, principles we once believed were carved in stone.

However, Russia’s full-scale attack revealed that even the most basic human bond — family — is devastatingly fragile, transforming from life’s foundation into a luxury that could be revoked.

Ukrainians under Russian occupation faced systematic destruction of their very existence — deported from their homes, herded into basements, tortured, and killed for any sign of disobedience — or just for the occupiers’ entertainment.

For many, even freedom — the fundamental pillar of Western civilization — shrank to a single brutal choice: face near-certain death running through artillery fire toward liberation, or submit to the slow death in captivity.

Russian occupation invaded even the last sanctuary of the human mind — the “inner fortress” of one’s own thoughts. The occupation regime demands not just submission but active loyalty and enthusiastic support while razing Ukrainian identity through the indoctrination of adults and assimilation of children, forced into Russian schools.

Even those fortunate enough to remain in Ukraine-controlled territory had to put their lives on hold to protect something even more fundamental –— the very possibility of life, now constantly under threat. For soldiers, family life shrank to two-week reunions each year, becoming a mere reminder of what they were fighting for in the years between.

However, Ukraine’s deepest sorrow is that a young nation, just beginning to rebuild after decades of Soviet oppression, was suddenly forced to defend its very right to exist once more — like a freshly planted field, on the brink of its first harvest after long years of hunger, set ablaze before it could bear fruit.

A democracy punished for existing

The 2014 Revolution of Dignity marked Ukraine’s final break from its Soviet past and gave rise to a democracy that Russia could not accept.

This new, free society was built first by the people, while institutions adapted to follow. After centuries of Russian tsars’ and Soviet leaders’ efforts to assimilate Ukrainians into the “Russian world,” Ukrainian literature, music, and the arts revived, forging a vibrant landscape that honored its history and celebrated the new creative spirit.

This newfound pride, in stark contrast to the dark history of Russian and Soviet oppression, fueled Ukraine’s determination to resist the unfolding invasion — a resolve that remains incomprehensible to many Westerners, who have known Russia primarily through textbooks and cultural emigration.

The drive to “punish” Ukraine for its independence and subjugate it — because, in Putin’s distorted view, it “didn’t really exist”— was the sole reason for the invasion. While shocking to the West, this scenario was all too familiar to Ukrainians who had lived through Soviet repression just a few decades earlier.

Despite this, the Russian war sparked an existential crisis foreign to both the West, shielded by generations of uninterrupted peace, and post-independence Ukrainians, striving to be the first in its history to obtain it.

For the West, inviolable borders were seen as the inevitable outcome of history; for Ukrainians, they embodied the hope of breaking free from it.

Relearning history’s hardest lessons

As the first Russian missiles lit up the sky in February 2024, those raised in the information age — accustomed to solving problems individually in the digital world — found themselves thrust into physical ordeals where survival depended on community rather than solitary action.

Unity, solidarity, nation — or, as Ukrainian drone pioneer Mariia Berlinska puts it, a tribe — suddenly reemerged as the only forces capable of restoring the personal security, privacy, and liberty taken by invaders.

Ukrainian experience reveals a fundamental reality many in the West had forgotten: those basic elements of collective identity, shared values, and civilization, often dismissed as obsolete in a globalized world, are, in fact, the very bedrock upon which all human rights and freedoms rest.

The Russia-Ukraine war makes us face an inconvenient truth that every generation seems to forget in times of peace: civilization is fragile and demands relentless defense against the forces of subjugation and destruction.

Revealing the power of unity, the Russian-Ukrainian war unearthed another fact: nations endure through the contributions of individuals who form their fabric. Ukraine’s resilience in the face of war is a testament to millions of Ukrainians — those who took up arms and those who supported the defenders.

Without this tapestry of ordinary people choosing to fight, neither President Zelenskyy nor the government could have marshaled the nation’s defense: the leaders emerge only when there are those ready to follow.

This principle of collective responsibility cuts both ways. Russia’s invasion wasn’t launched by Putin alone — it was enabled by millions of Russians who chose complicity. Every soldier who crossed the border, every worker who assembled weapons, every citizen who paid taxes into the Kremlin’s war chest, every voice that stayed silent — even if in varying degrees, they all share authorship of this war.

The price of collective security

War’s nature is dual — defined by heroic resistance and devastating tragedy. While culture honors warrior spirit, the past three years have shown Ukrainians —defined by heroic resistance and devastating tragedy. While culture honors the warrior spirit, the past three years have shown Ukrainians — and the world — that being strong enough to deter the enemy is better than fighting.

The failure of the Budapest Memorandum and the patchwork of arms supplies, turning the war into an unrelenting battle of attrition, has propelled a staggering 89% of Ukrainians to back NATO membership — and even revived the notion of reclaiming nuclear weapons as a vital security guarantee.

Ukrainian resistance reminds the world of another lesson: courage alone cannot guarantee survival.

The bravest soldiers remain as fragile as anyone else, vulnerable to random bullets, shrapnel, or explosions, exposing the fundamental fragility of human life — and the importance of viewing it as a goal, not a means.

With birth rates plummeting and emigration soaring — and an acute demographic crisis decades before the invasion — the government faces the delicate task of shielding its limited youth from mobilization — losing them would equate to losing the future Ukraine is fighting for.

Ukraine’s struggle underscores the timeless concept that “freedom is not free,” reminding us that life itself cannot be taken for granted. For some nations, the fight is not about prosperity, power, or interests — it’s about the fundamental right to exist.

Ukrainian resistance Ukraine’s struggle brings to life the timeless reality that “freedom is not free,” revealing the true cost — and profound value — of Western security and human life.

Editor’s note. The opinions expressed in our Opinion section belong to their authors. Euromaidan Press’ editorial team may or may not share them.

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