Ukrainian history always laughs at predictions, and heroes and antiheroes swap places every day, — opinion

I do not know what the country will look like in ten years. The recent 35 have shown that forecasts in our country do not come true, writes a service member and journalist Pavlo Kazarin.

Every time we look back, we fall for the temptation to describe the path traveled as the only possible one. History seems to us a logical straight line that connects our yesterday with our today. But if a time machine allowed us to return to the past, no one would believe our description of the future.

Imagine that you return to the summer of 2013. You say that within a few months protests will sweep the country. That security forces will kill more than a hundred people. That Maidan will prevail, Yanukovych will flee, and Russia, taking advantage of the chaos, will annex Crimea.

You will be talking about the country entering an anti-terrorist operation. That the Russians will shoot down a passenger 'Boeing'. But the phrase "and the former Georgian president will head the Odesa region" will cause your friends to call an ambulance. The only thing you will be able to do in the summer 2013 is to buy dollars at eight.

You may object: well, we are now separated from our prewar selves by the Russian invasion. That it reshaped our notion of what is permissible. That the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Donbas changed Ukraine and Ukrainians. And that after February 2014 it will be much easier for us to face reality.

Then imagine that the time machine takes you to the summer 2016. And you begin to tell friends that Nadya Savchenko, who has just come out of Russian prison, is not at all who she is believed to be. Then you can tell acquaintances who will become the next president of the country. You can even turn on the TV and show them the future head of state. After this your friends will again call you an ambulance.

You can not go far and imagine that fate takes you to the summer 2021. And you suggest to your loved ones to guess who the West will declare the face of freedom and the symbol of democracy against dictators next year. Hint number one is the president. Hint number two is not the US president. And you will again be asked to call an ambulance, because believing in the image metamorphoses of the Ukrainian president can only be someone who has read European headlines in 2022.

We often look in our past for that crossroads that separates us from our recent selves to the present. That watershed after which the future stopped surprising us. That point of a phase transition after which events began to seem logical and inevitable to us.

But the point is that such a point does not exist. Our heroes and antiheroes swap places. Our reality falsifies our yesterday forecasts. There is no point for us in the present to travel to the past, because no one there will believe us.

In 1991 the people who sought freedom and democracy voted for Chornovila, and those who wanted a revamped USSR voted for Kravchuk. In 1994 the supporters of freedom voted for Kravchuk, and the adherents of the USSR for Kuchma. In 1999 in the second round supporters of Ukraine voted for Kuchma, and their opponents — for Symonenko. Our country is a country of tricksters. Every hero is on the border, and you never know whose side he will take at the critical moment of history. Maybe yours.

Foretelling the future is the privilege of countries that stand on rails, whose trajectory is clearly visible. And Ukraine is a ship in a storm. Our future depends on how well we complete the homework. And also on hundreds of thousands of factors we cannot influence.

We do not know who will win in the next elections. And it's not only that they are possible only after the war, and we do not know when it will end.

The thing is that war becomes for society an anesthesia—and it is the very thing that gives us the unity we see in opinion polls. The end of the war will plunge us again into our usual disputes and divisions. After the war we will be as different from our prewar selves as we are now different from our prewar selves.

Our postwar reality will depend on how we see the scenario of the war's end — victory or defeat. An inclusive victory — it may have many parents, and under its umbrella there will be room for everyone. For those who fought, and those who paid taxes. Those who stayed, and those who left. And with a defeat, everything is exactly the opposite — it is a sense that plunges the country into frustration, forces it to search for villains and leads to 'Orbanization'. That is why, if Russia cannot defeat us on the battlefield, it will do everything to convince us that it has won.

We do not know what our streets will look like after the war. How many new accents and skin tones will be on them. Our depopulation will require us to make difficult choices, and we will have to choose between migration and a half-empty country. Our future challenges will generate debates that we are not even thinking about now, because we are preoccupied with survival.

We do not know what future awaits NATO. Once we dreamed of membership in this organization. And over the last four years our country managed to destroy the Soviet tank fist, created to throw to the La Manche. In a situation where the strongest army on the planet may turn away from Europe, the only thing it can rely on is the strongest army of the continent. That is, ours.

We do not know what future awaits the United States. For decades we have been used to seeing them as a beacon of democracy and a model to follow. And the last two years we are getting used to the idea that there are no adults in the room. That the only adults are us.

The only thing the last 35 years can teach us is that we are capable of surprising ourselves. Circumstances are not static, people change, coincidences ruin plans. Sometimes I even envy conspiracy theorists, because in their worldview everything that happens is predetermined. But in reality our world is governed by black swans.

The black swans in our country are us.