Having moved away from the post-Soviet dream of the 2000s and early 2010s, the Ukrainian people have discovered politics in a new way since 2014: we have realized that society is built not only around the level of prices, salaries, andsalaries and pensions. In other words, the world turned out to be much bigger than we had imagined. Thus, we have, for better or worse, matured as a nation, but at the same time we have faced new challenges, on the solution of which our existence depends. So let’s try to understand the nature of the latter and figure out how to solve them.
Undoubtedly, the most important challenge for the Ukrainian people today (and for the entire period of independence) is the demographic crisis. And it would be a big mistake to explain it only by a purely economic factor, because the level of financial security does not play a decisive role in the process of starting a family and having children. He says this, for example, statistics According to the UN, the highest fertility rates are in poor countries in Africa and the Middle East. This can be explained by the fact that the local population of these countries has certain religious beliefs, according to which starting a family is a duty not only to society but also to God. In other words, it is moral values that become the determining factor for reproduction in the above-mentioned societies. In Ukraine, however, the values of materialism and careerism are flourishing among the majority of the population; feminism and the LGBT movement are making themselves felt. All of this clearly does not stimulate the birth rate of our people, and as a result, we find ourselves in a situation worse than the Africans, because along with poverty, we also have a shortage of labor, without which economic growth is impossible. We should not forget the problem of abortion.
Thus, in the period from 2000 to 2019, the following were
made
more than 4 million, and these could be potential workers, peasants, or intellectuals. Thus, given the war factor and the massive emigration of women and children abroad, we can say that our country is on the verge of extinction, and if we do not start promoting traditional family values in schools, universities, and workplaces today, we may soon face a catastrophe.
Another problem for our country is its rather clumsy foreign policy: by limiting ourselves to partnerships with only a certain circle of Western countries, we are depriving ourselves of the opportunity to receive assistance, including military aid, from the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, India, and China. Russia, unfortunately, was more far-sighted in this matter and was able to enlist the support of Iran, whose “shahids” have been sowing death in Ukraine for years. And this is, by and large, a failure of our diplomacy, which is now affecting all of us.
We should also not forget about the economic component of our country. Being a post-Soviet country, we were not ready either mentally or physically for the transition to capitalism. As a result, taking advantage of the naivety of our people, the clumsiness and greed of bureaucrats, outright bandits, whom we now call oligarchs, were able to appropriate all strategic sectors of the economy through fraud, corruption and violence, thus becoming the real masters of Ukraine. As we know, they don’t care much about Ukrainians, seeing us only as an easily replaceable resource. This is evidenced, in particular, by annual increases in utility tariffs and a reduction in existing benefits. For example, the same progressive system of maternity benefits was canceled back in 2014. It provided for an increase in the amount of payments to parents for each newborn (30 subsistence minimums for the first child, 60 for the second, and 120 for the third). Now, the amount for each child is only UAH 41,280, which is a significant decrease and a severe blow to large families.
Thus, it can be argued that the above problems (and there are many more than listed in the text) pose a dilemma for Ukrainians: either not to change their lifestyle and continue to go with the flow and pray that it will take us to the shores of Eden, or, having made the right conclusions, to take decisive action: create communities/associations for mutual assistance (including assistance to the military); think about the issue of childbearing; create a Christian agenda to more effectively promote family values and solidarity. After all, who else but us can save Ukraine?