In the last few days, filled with tension and betrayed expectations, we have seen the possibility of a just peace slip away, swallowed by an increasingly dark horizon. The amendment to the peace plan – born to be the keystone and, for some, even the surrender of Kyiv– was hastily reduced from 28 to 20 points. A desperate attempt to make it digestible that achieved the opposite effect: Moscow rejected it with contempt, closing the door in the most blatant way possible. And with that gesture, it is not only the negotiations that tremble, but also Donald Trump’s dream of diplomatic glory, now more cracked than ever.

The American president, who had hoped to resolve the conflict with a snap of his fingers, now comes up against the harsh reality of history, which does not bend to electoral slogans, but rather bites back the fools who try to impose their own terms.

Ukraine trembles but does not fall

But while diplomacy fumbles on the international front, another drama is unfolding within Ukraine’s borders that also brings with it a no less significant wind of democracy.
The corruption scandals that have engulfed a number of prominent members of the Kiev government and the top management of the state energy company Energoatom have not remained circumscribed; like an oil slick, they have reached the offices of one of President Zelensky’s most powerful figures and closest associates: Andriy Yermak.
In this feverish climate, uncertainty is at an all-time high since the start of the invasion, as the pressure on the Western allies not to abandon ship becomes inevitable, almost desperate.

Yet even at a time like this, when the din of bombs threatens to drown out every other sound, no one notices perhaps the biggest ‘elephant in the room’ in modern democratic history.
Ukraine is performing an unprecedented political miracle: while it defends itself tooth and nail against the Russian aggressor, it does not stop its internal vengeance against the corrupt, pursuing and fighting against those who, from within, havestarved its own people, against those who have speculated on the skin of soldiers at the front in exchange for so-called ‘golden toilets’, the symbol of an obscene luxury paid for with the blood of the defenders.

Democracy in a state of war.

It becomes easy, almost obligatory, to ask how this is humanly possible. A state at total war, trying to physically survive annihilation, continues to fulfil its democratic and moral obligation to prosecute the corrupt, to pursue the snake that broods in its bosom until its head is crushed. This, on closer inspection, is the greatest and most glaring proof of democracy there can be.

In a context of war, logic would have it that the priorities were other: survival at any cost, unity at face value, and where military necessity, the thirst for justice and the desolation generated by the fighting should lead to a united front sweeping the dust under the carpet, the Ukrainians do not forget a fundamental truth: the worst of the evils is not just the external invader, but being a contaminated democracy, rotten within.

The merciless comparison with our reality

On the one hand, there are we Italians who have experienced and continue to experience corruption in an almost religious, fatalistic manner. Although we are aware that it is a cancer for democracy, an evil that we should fight by all means, we have surrendered to the idea that it must exist as an occult authority, an inevitable component of the system, but one that destroys it at the same time, and so we tolerate it, leave it alone, almost respect it as one respects an old, inconvenient tradition.

But on this point it is precisely the Ukrainians, today, who are taking the chair and teaching us what democracy really is. With a blade held at their throats by the Russian enemy and one pointed at their chests to eradicate internal evil, they are advancing the democratic process relentlessly, approaching an institutional purity provided by absolute transparency, and they are doing all this under artillery fire, in a context of war where every mistake is paid for with the lives of civilians, soldiers, doctors and rescuers.

The faults of the fearful European states

If anyone should be beating their chest shouting ‘mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa’, it is certainly not them, but it is us westerners! We who fill our mouths with talk of values at elegant conferences, but repeatedly betray them all at the first difficulty. We promised unwavering support to Kyiv (‘as long as it takes’, we said), and stopped, trembling, as soon as Trump stamped his feet threatening disengagement.

We promised a just peace in Ukraine, based on international law, but we ourselves hesitate to take serious action even when the threat knocks on our doors, in Romania, Sweden, Poland and in Germany itself enemy drones are spotted over our military bases and critical infrastructure, we choose the path of silence and sloth for fear of escalation, demonstrating all our weakness and cowardice.

Perhaps it is an uncomfortable truth, but it must be said: perhaps it is we Europeans, slumbering in our comfort zone, who need a war at home to become truly democratic states again, to rediscover the value of freedom.

Perhaps democracy has an expiry date, just like milk, and we have long since passed it. To renew it, to make it alive and pulsating again, we really need that tribute of blood, sweat and tears that Churchill evoked and that Ukrainians are shedding every day. For too long we have surrendered to those ‘upside-down’ monsters, flirted with autocracies for economic convenience, and in the end, without even realising it, we have become their pawns, hostages of our own cowardice.

Because gentlemen at the end of it all, no one can survive with their head in the lion’s jaws.