How to Stick to Life in the Middle of a War

Sometimes I wonder what life really is.

As a 19-year-old university student, fairly committed to studying and socially active, your life can easily turn into a routine.

You wake up, you go to lectures, back home you throw together some food, then you start studying until God knows when, and then you collapse in your all but comfy bed.

Suddenly your alarm wakes you up. Guess what? Another day! Sometimes I underestimate the power of "habits", but mercy on David Hume, who crudely reminds me of the fallacies in judgment we life-beings disclose.

Reluctantly, I crawl myself up to the top shelf where my alarm is buzzing, breaking the silence of the dorm's early morning. I sit on my broken swivel chair, and, as part of my monotonous routine, I open the news, only for my eyes to capture some unusual title. Today, February 24th, 2022, the BBC reports "Russian forces have launched a major assault on Ukraine, firing missiles on cities and military targets."

I am devastated. I rub my eyes vigorously and try to process the sequence of words I am facing on my screen.

How can a War in Europe be a thing in 2022? Even the Economist Keynes affirmed that "…the prospect of a European war is uncertain…".

Uncertainty is, by definition, a process without a final unique state, which means there are different possibilities besides that of making a war break out. And yet, human actions have reduced the possible outcomes to a single, perturbing event, thereby making the uncertain a certainty. Homo sapiens sapiens or Homo deus? Is that how we should be called? I’d rather call us Homo stultorum stultissimus (the silliest among silly people).

By scrolling the media, I am abruptly plunged into the real happenings in Ukraine. I start to ask myself how I would feel and how I would behave if I were under that sky covered in storms of rumbling Russian planes. Would I gather my family to shelter in Kyiv's underground? Would I get in my car and emigrate to Poland? Or rather, would I stand firm to fight for my Country?

After the dust has settled, one thing becomes clearer: this event forewarns to transform the entire world's equilibrium. Up to this moment, International and European Politics have been characterized by an apparent state of peace, given by enacted measures such as the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation (1997) and the Minsk Agreements (2014).

The extent to which sudden changes in such geopolitical equilibria affect the individual level is impressive. Wouldn't it thus be better to define life as a series of "granular equilibria"? In the sense that everything in our lives – from microscopic physic phenomena (think of Archimedes’ Buoyancy law) to economic macro effects of our actions and the Institutions’ responses – could be formulated in balancing terms.

But what happened? In the early afternoon of February 21st (Moscow time), the Kremlin ratified the end of Minsk Agreements – signed between Russia and Ukraine after the Crimean Crisis of 2014 – as if the meeting were a rehearsal of a play written by the Russian President Vladimir Putin. As a matter of fact, every attendant backed Putin's decision in a heartbeat, all except for Nikolay Patrushev and Sergey Naryshkin, respectively the Secretary of the Security Council of Russia and the Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service SVR, being both in favor of a temporary stall. On the same occasion, their proposal was taken down by Putin's authoritarian – as well as diabolic I should say – prompt remarks.

Unbelievable may it be, yet the decision was taken and the peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine was dissolved by Russia's recognition of the Donetsk's and Luhansk's People's Republic. Such a move triggered protests by Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, as well as NATO's concern directed over Eastern Europe's fate. Despite this all, what happened next is history – unfortunately still in the making.

Why has this happened? Officially, Putin justified his attack to "ensure peace". In his speech, he recalled and criticized the creation of the Ukrainian People's Republic on November 20th, 1917, following October's Revolution in Russia. Such a claim, backed with other political and economic arguments, would be enough to legitimize the Russian attack, according to the President of the Russian Federation.

In spite of the official statements, should we decide to investigate beyond Putin's propaganda, we would most likely be drawn to a different and deeper conclusion. A possible latent reason was revealed by Alexey Navalny, whose non-profit Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) was accused by SKR (The Investigative Committee of Russia) of money laundering. Navalny was illegitimately imprisoned and is currently under trial. On the present events, he declared that: "The war with Ukraine has been unleashed to cover up the robbery of Russian citizens and divert their attention away from the country's internal problems and the degradation of its economy." And since corruption, as Navalny has tirelessly claimed, plays a core instrumental role in Putin's governance, the latter hypothesis as to the causes of the war's breakout is not completely unfounded.

Whatever the reason, there is one thing that surely is true: the actions we take drastically affect our equilibria, which, in turn, become "Disequilibria", or else states of disorder that differ from the initial state. But the most logical conclusion is that life is no longer a series of balances, as the existence of disequilibria would give birth to non-life. Certainty? We have lost it, as we have seen from the rise of Covid-19 to this last-straw episode we all wish could come to an end as soon as possible.

In our world, torn apart by uncertainties, one thing is certain after all: unless we stop conflicts, there would be nothing else left but chaos. After having used mass-destruction weapons against ourselves, "…World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”, as Einstein prophetically suggested.

Life. I may not have much experience in life, but what is happening right now teaches us that Life is precious, and Freedom is not to be taken for granted, even in 2022.

Pray for Ukraine.

Davide Santangelo