Hi everyone and welcome to this first issue of Ukrainian Pulse!
This newsletter’s goal is to keep you up to date about what is driving the conversation in Ukraine right now, debates and discussions that don’t always make it to the English-language infosphere. This week, the big question is whether it’s okay to spend money on roads when those funds could be used to buy drones. We’ll also be taking a quick look at a poll on how long some Ukrainians think the war will last, before translating a small extract of an op-ed by journalist Pavlo Kazarin, who really doesn’t like the concept of “economic front” and thinks it is dividing society.
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The discussion
One fairly unusual debate in Ukraine has these past few days focused on expenditures, and whether or not it is acceptable for state and local authorities to spend resources on things like repairing roads or renovating museums when this money could be used to fund the military.
It started with a smallish scandal last week, when reports emerged that a Kyiv district administration had spent close to $40,000 on high-end vegetable cutters for school shelters, as well as $24,000 on sets of drums made to provide “psychological support” for children in shelters.
Then, on Sunday, Ukrainian physicist Anton Senenko published a post on Facebook, quickly shared more than 8,000 times, in which he denounced the “surrealism” of some expenditures in wartime: “the state needs money for war. That is clear, and understandable” Stenenko wrote. “Volunteers and society cover the fighters’ critical needs, because the state doesn’t have enough resources. But for roads, memorials, lawns, stadiums, for all this, it turns that there actually are resources.”
But it seems to me that the debate really took off because the discussion about expenditures—the announcement made on July 13 that the state had issued a permit to replace the Soviet emblem on Kyiv’s Motherland Monument also played a role—comes just as some pundits warn that the country may be losing its advantage in drone warfare. “At the beginning of the war, we had the edge when it came to strike drones, with the Bayraktar, and we were the first to make use of suicide drones [...] and while we kept it at the level of private initiative, the Russians were able to take these ideas and put them on an industrial level” Ukrainian economist and pundit Pavel Vernivskiy wrote on July 15.
“There is a universal method to check whether a state expense is needed right now” Artem Bidenko, a former state official and current PR specialist, argued on Facebook a day later. “Ask yourself, what happens if the expense is postponed for a year? What will change? If the answer is ‘nothing’, it is better to spend that money on drones.”
Similar take from journalist Petro Shuklinov, whose Facebook post on the topic—also published on July 16—was shared close to 10,000 times: “why are we repaving streets when we need hundreds of thousands of drones ? [...] All the money should be spent on cars. All the money should be spent on drones. All the money should be spent on rockets. Everything to the military.”
The conversation grew loud enough to be picked up on Monday by David Arakhamia, leading Ukrainian politician and de facto one of the most influential men in the country. In a seething message published on Telegram, Arkhamia called on local authorities to refrain from useless expenditures, claiming their “priorities” were “brewing serious dissatisfaction in society”. Arkhamia added that the parliament had been considering limiting these expenses but had so far refrained from legislating out of fear that this would be seen as an attack on decentralization. “Consider this a final warning,” he wrote.
Something else
As Ukraine passed the 500th day of the Russian invasion, popular Ukrainian blogger Roman Shrayk polled his audience on how much longer they thought the war would last—a poll he’s been doing twice a week since the war began. The poll isn’t exactly scientific, but Shrayk’s significant audience (more than 20,000 people answered the latest poll) makes it interesting as a way to gauge the mood of an audience that tends to consume a lot of news. 54% of Shrayk’s readers now believe the war will last “more than a year”, a figure that was just above 30% back in February. 24% of respondents believe the war will be over in 12 months or less, from a peak of 40% near the New Year. “Not much to say, after the temporary effect of Prigozhin’s revolt we’re back to the trend of people expecting the war to last longer and longer” writes Shrayk. “The only thing that can now reverse that trend are military changes on the map”.
Verbatim
In an op-ed published by Ukrainska Pravda on July 15, journalist Pavlo Kazarin rails against the concept of “economic front” and the use of the war in marketing, arguing it increases tension between the military and the rear.
What is happening at the front gave the military additional legitimacy. Wearing the military uniform began to give additional weight to any statement. Service in the army means belonging to the country's most important professional caste. It is not surprising that many are then tempted to use this new topic that can give popularity and prestige. Marketers repainted packages in camouflage colors, or launched new products with a pseudo-military image. They experimented with naming, and "Bakhmut" vodka and "Azovstal" radishes* appeared on the market. But all this is appropriation. [...] In a country at war, tension naturally arises between the front and the rear. Between the asceticism of front-line life, and the neon signs of the city in the rear. But the fact is that such tension inevitably arises in any country faced with major challenges. Epidemics or earthquakes also drive an emotional wedge between those affected, and those who aren’t. And everything is determined only by whether people deepen this split, or whether they try to throw bridges across it. Any inappropriate appropriation in this sense provokes tension. Increases distance. It sows distrust among people in uniform towards those who do not. [...] The economic front does not really exist. What does exist is an economic rear, just like there is a cultural, informational or educational rear.
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