Why We Fight, Why We Resist
Life

Why We Fight, Why We Resist

life war ukraine

This is a translation of an article originally published in Ukrainian on Livyi Bereg (lb.ua) by Kyrylo Danylchenko on February 21, 2026. There are lots of subtle sarcasm and references that would not be understood by non-Ukrainian auditories, so I’ve put some clarification links and footnotes.

A man came to me recently in the comments on Facebook and said: “I don’t understand — why do you people do this? Why do you resist so fiercely? It’s some kind of instinctual thing — trying to survive and not end up in a basement in the ‘DPR.’”

The man simply missed the school curriculum where they explain that humans don’t have instincts — only reflexes. And yet he himself is “instinctively” sitting in the USA. Such is life. But since so many people don’t understand, let’s talk it through.

There are no European interests in Ukraine or Russia for which we are fighting here. That is nonsense — conspiracy thinking. Europe’s interests in Russia were Germany helping to set up a military training center in Mulino (Russia) that trains 100,000 people a year; it was selling wigs, carriages, and jewelry to Russian oligarch’s mistresses in exchange for oil, grain, and hemp. Whatever century you’re talking about. Wake me up in 100 years and I’ll tell you the same thing: Russia exports raw materials to Europe and buys luxury goods and technology. Europe wanted the mistresses of “United Russia” functionaries to frolic in Milan, and Russian nouveau riche to buy up entire neighborhoods in London. But the old man decided he wanted some “action” and “historical lands.” Europe is forced to respond.

The entirely predictable response right now is to give resources to those who know how to destroy the enemy — an enemy that wants to seize territories that are currently part of the European Union (and the “historical Russian lands” include Finland, the Baltic states, and Poland). If we fall, the eastern flank will require not only Canadian brigades and Polish divisions but also building infrastructure, housing for soldiers — trillions of euros. But that doesn’t mean we are fighting for Europe’s interests. We have our own interests.

And our interest is very simple. Our interest is to not end up in a system where you’re thrown in a penal colony or impaled on a bottle1 for the “wrong” kind of joke. Where rivals are killed near the Kremlin in plain sight of a girlfriend2, and the killers calmly flee to Chechnya. To not end up in a system where political opponents have poison rubbed into their bodies3 and officials laugh — “prove it, show us.”

Over there, by the way, life might even be better fed. You can buy an apartment with the maternity capital for a second child — we don’t have that here. Their CNC machine operators in the defense industry earn 150,000–200,000 rubles — $1,500–$2,000 a month. Sooner or later the Russians will pump big money into occupied Mariupol, build a connection with the port, maybe not restore the steel industry but invent some heavy manufacturing, wire the people up through television, and control them through facial recognition systems and in-network comment monitoring. Now that they’ve blocked Telegram and the various YouTubes, they’ll build some “Cheburnet”4 where you earn stars for how enthusiastically you perform for Putin.

And in the meantime, while they play Civilization VII, the half-destroyed Mariupol will be resettled with serfs from depressed regions where spring doesn’t arrive until May. The locals will be handed a handful of apartments and promised cheap mortgages. Television will tell them who to love. And those who love Ukraine a little too much — off to the “basement” for some dental procedures5.

Am I being clear? That is exactly why we resist so fiercely. The years-long front at Avdiivka, beyond creating “extreme tension,” gave us the opportunity to relocate production, evacuate part of the active population to safe territory, and leave the Russians ruins, “zhun”-pensioners6 as a charge on their pension fund, and mine-riddled land. Flooded mines, severed rail links, and trillions needed for reconstruction. Those who stayed are the ones who don’t need re-education anyway. The only thing is — no children, no economically active population, no machine tools, no industrial output, all that walked out with us. Only ruins remain.

Plus we gained experience, and Europe got to see that their Aerospace Forces is a fancy name: they drop dumb bombs from 50 km away and can’t shoot down a MiG-29 dropping the same dumb bombs from our side. Which means at the strategic level, aviation is roughly a wash — and on naval power they have no chance whatsoever. The conclusion is clear: ground forces and drones are what matter.

Russia needs to develop everything — if the Kremlin intends to fight not just Ukraine. That requires a sweeping reform of the armed forces, which is impossible to carry out while fighting a war against us. There simply won’t be enough money.

Develop nuclear deterrence forces and build nuclear submarines, try to rebuild the fleet, and defend against drones.

Europe does its job, we do ours. We must leave the occupied Donbas to the Russians in the most destroyed state possible — so they cannot restart it and, after processing the survivors through “Ballistic Defense Towers,”7 dispatch them to conquer Belarus, then Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Baltic states. And of course, push to the Dnipro line. We don’t need any of that. That is why any withdrawal is contraindicated for us. The moment we leave any territory under any pretext, the Russians will move in: first with police units and television, and then it will unfold just like the occupation of the demilitarized Rhineland. And the world will say: “What, do you want nuclear war? They promise not to go any further — we should believe them.”

So it’s simple. Maybe for some people it’s pure instinct, or maybe there’s no explanation at all — but I have an explanation. I don’t want to live in a dictatorship. I don’t want to spend my days guessing which post or which word of mine will land me in a basement. I don’t want poison from a tropical frog slipped into my underwear3 for investigating corruption. I don’t want a basement, while the all-consuming masses take out mortgages and collect maternity capital, agreeing decade after decade to see one face in the portrait — a face bloated with fillers and botox.

If we can be forced to withdraw from the belt of fortresses, then we can be forced to withdraw from Zaporizhzhia. Then a buffer zone near Belgorod and Kursk can be arranged: “Well, you surely don’t want those savage Ukrainians striking our facilities again? Why would they do that — we just knocked out their district heating plants in the dead of winter, and they’re behaving so inhumanely.” This is a path to nowhere.

We are selling the body’s own immune response: they are not welcome there, all they get is fever and poison. All the while, on free territory, we train white blood cells and phagocytes and send them across the line. And there, for some reason, gauleiters explode and missiles find their way to exactly where they need to go — missiles perhaps manufactured in Europe, just as many millions of shells are, just as millions of drones are. Well, you wanted to “repeat” what your grandfathers did? You wanted European territory and to wash your boots in the Gulf of Finland again?

This is how things work, this is how they happen: tolerance for other cultures must not be confused with the kind of tolerance where the body can no longer mount a defense. Yes, we are fighting a brutal war. Yes, it is hard. Yes, we have hundreds of thousands of wounded and maimed. But we have no choice — a virus is breaking down our doors, one that wants to turn our own organs against us, spinning an alternative history and selling people an eternal tsar in exchange for “at least not the hungry nineties.”8

We hope to break their backbone through the wallet, when they can no longer recruit hundreds of thousands of people for obscene sums of money; they hope to break us through a shortage of infantry and desertion. The cause is singular: a deranged old man wanted to go down in history as a “gatherer of lands.” And in his country, no one was found to stop him — the political field had already been swept clean.

No freemasons, no reptilians, no cunning EU master plans are prolonging this war. We do not leave territory because doing so would make the next war harder for us and easier for them. Those who don’t believe there will be a next war can look at how long Russia gnawed at the leg of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth while signing the “Eternal Peace” and kissing the cross — 150 years9.

The physical death of the Patrushevs10 and Putins, or an economic collapse back to the nineties — that is the real end of the war as things stand today. You can accept this, you can deny it, but that is the state of affairs in 2026. It may be easier for you to hear it now — I accepted all of this in 2014 and have been living with it for many years.

Footnotes

  1. In 2014, at a military base in Vladikavkaz, Caucasians bullied a Russian soldier and forced him to apologize for insulting Muslims. Among other abuses, the soldier was forced to sit on a bottle. This became a meme showing the relationship between the state and citizens in Russia. ↩

  2. Reference to the murder of Nemtsov - member of Russian opposition. ↩

  3. Reference to the murder of Navalny - member of Russian opposition. ↩ ↩2

  4. Mocking word of Russian isolated and government controlled Internet. ↩

  5. Reference to common Russian torture of Ukrainian civilians and POV. ↩

  6. Reference to pro-USSR minority in Ukraine, predominantly over 70 years old, who see Russia as a continuation of USSR. ↩

  7. Reference to the sci-fi novel Prisoners of Power by Strugatsky brother that describe a planet, majority of citizens of which are programmed by the “defence towers”, that are essentially just broadcasters of this programming, but they are called “defence towers” to make people believe that they are protecting them. ↩

  8. Common phrase used by Russian to justify any unlawful actions by the government. The 90s hit Russia really hard - there was hunger, and majority of people were extremely poor. Now 90s became a scarecrow in Russia. ↩

  9. Reference to Muscovite-Lithuanian wars. ↩

  10. Reference to Nikolai Patrushev, head of FSB (FSS), who is believed to be one of the instigators of Russian invasion. ↩