Ukraine is a landfill for Western democracies

Oleg Saakyan political scientist, co-founder of the national platform of stability and cohesion Ukraine has become not only a field of battle for democracy, but also a landfill of new socio-political mechanisms And for the world community.

Globally before the world has been actualized since the end of World War II: can democracy effectively defend and maintain competition with dictatorships in the conditions of collapse of international fuses? Video of the Day Ukraine has been showing the seventh month what it can. That democracy is fully converted to and supported, and if it is not "spread on bread", it is accurately converted to HIMARS and billions of currency support.

What is the Ukrainian secret of sustainable democracy? While the civilized world is thinking about this difficult task, Ukraine courageously resists the predominant us in the enemy's power, won its first victories and already gives some recipes. Ukraine in our eyes became not only a field of battle for democracy, but also a polygon of new socio-political mechanisms of stability, and a laboratory for security for a civilized event. 1.

Ukrainians demonstrate the key quality of sustainable democracy - the readiness of society to protect it. Ukraine's response to Russian attack proves that there is a direct connection between the steady democracy and the society's willingness to defend and adapt to complex security and humanitarian threats. Developed civil society, energetic volunteer movement, availability of people with combat experience helped the country to resist the first days and months of a large -scale invasion.

It was the volunteers who, thanks to the network, found and delivered everything they needed to the front, assisted the displaced persons, solved a number of other tasks that the states had no resources. The presence of informal contacts between businesses, authorities and grassroots have replaced the bureaucratic channels of interaction by increasing the speed and efficiency of actions. 2.

Ukraine has demonstrated the influence of horizontal networks and the potential of cohesion on the ability to resist, when the enemy has to fight not only with the state, but above all, with society. The reform and the principle of decentralization have become one of the recipes of Ukraine's sustainability, proving their competitive advantage over centralized hierarchical systems. But Ukraine was demonstrated by Ukraine.

In our case, decentralized vertically system is closely intertwined with network horizontal ligaments, formal and not. This allows you to achieve distribution not only in decision making, but also in their implementation and information. Thus, the decentralized system is transformed into distributed - due to synergy with horizontal networks and decentralized vertical. This gives the effect as a car with a drive to all 4 wheels: while one thrust, the other three help to leave the conditional pit. 3.

The third component of stability in Ukrainian conditions was digitalization and its government. Stereotypically digitalization is perceived rather as a threat to security, because of data vulnerability, personal information, public services, not as a tool for improving it. The offensive of the Russians showed the opposite. Digitalization helped to increase the ability of Ukrainian society.

In particular, this ensured the stability of communication systems, the continuity of public services and information. The functioning of official information channels and a stable information system through public opinion leaders, various speakers for different audiences was ensured. And it was also demonstrated by the IT sector, which was the most adapted clusters of the Ukrainian economy.

And of course: the war in Ukraine is covered online, which enables everyone - from ordinary citizens to the president of the state to inform the world public about events, steps of Ukraine, atrocities and crimes of Russians. Ukraine has already become a cult of resistance and struggle - it is through digitalization and stability. 4.

The fourth important component is a partial antidote in the form of a "presumption of distrust" from Russian information and psychological terror on the basis of misinformation and promotion of destructive narratives.

After the start of a full -scale attack on Ukraine, one key thing took place - Russian sources of information began to be approached with a presumption of distrust, not to perceive their information, if no other was proven, it was checked several times, which increased the resistance to act equal with other media. For years, the Russians have built their propaganda machine, mimicing under the democratic standards of Western media and took the appearance of a legitimate source of information.

After a number of misinformation, the dominance of fakes, the assurance that they will not attack Ukraine, - Russia has radically changed its attitude to its media to the presumption of distrust. And after that, this propaganda machine for such a full -scale impact in the West - broke. It is one of the elements to counteract modern propaganda in the postmodern era, where "everyone has their own truth," and freedom of speech is matured by freedom of lies.

It should also be emphasized on the aspects of information stability, which have already shown their positive results, and the world perceived them as the norm. First, Ukraine has demonstrated the high openness and density of the information flow, because vacuum or lack of information is somewhat worse than information that may not satisfy society. Such communication only contributed to trust - and therefore stability.

In these circumstances, it would seem impossible, society has turned on the mechanisms of self -censorship in matters related to the movement of troops, sensitive and secret information. Secondly, in the first days of aggression, Ukraine "jumped" from the funnel of the victim's image and increased its own narrative of struggle and resistance to aggression.

Ukraine has shown that it can repel the second army of the world, and it is not only the case of the Armed Forces and the authorities - it is a nationwide business of the people, communities, volunteers. The emergence of such narrative provides the stability of information rear and helps in working with external audiences in the modern war.

To win in the Netflix world, the country must create its own image and think story, form its own narrative of resistance, which becomes a point of gathering for the perception of disparate information flows and its own messages. Finally, the Ukrainians showed an incredible speed to adapt to a difficult situation and were able to systematically resist themselves even without so -called "vertical" structures. Self -organization is one of the important markers of Ukrainian stability.