The practical part of denazification of Ukraine

Due to its size and political weight, Russia has been, is and always will be a factor that directly affects the processes taking place in Europe in general and in Eastern Europe in particular. It has a whole fan of possibilities to stop or at least significantly slow down those that it considers undesirable or dangerous for itself. At the same time, Ukraine – due to many factors, which we will not dwell on here and now - is the only one of the republics of the former USSR that could theoretically challenge Russia, claim to be an alternative to Russia's proposed "assembly point" of a new political space in this part of Eurasia. Our two countries (like Germany and France once) will never escape from competition. But historical experience is ambivalent and shows that such competition does not necessarily condemn countries to confrontation, much less armed conflicts. Cross-country competition should lead (in any case, this should be sought) to a conjugate modernization, to a joint acceleration of socio-economic development, to a reduction in the lag behind the technologically developed states of Europe and the world ^{[13, p. 28]}.

The objective necessity of a special military operation that the Russian Federation is conducting in Ukraine is determined by the systemic socio-political crisis that has characterized its development over the past years. Among the significant consequences of this crisis are the so-called "conflict of identities" associated with the transformation of the ideas of a part of the population of the southeastern territories of Ukraine about their region, its ethno-cultural appearance, place and role in the history of both Russia and Ukraine, as well as in the events of modernity ^{[5, p. 126]}.

The special military operation turned out to be a forced measure, an inevitable and necessary forceful response to the genocide of the Russian population of Donbass encouraged by the West, cynical and no longer concealed disregard for Russian concerns about the revanchist intentions of the criminal Ukrainian regime to return Crimea by force and pour blood over Donbass. The insistently demanding wishes of the head of Ukrainian diplomacy D. Kuleba to institutionalize Ukraine's place in the West as an outpost of the global struggle with Russia ^[1], the statements of the President of Ukraine V. Zelensky about the need to create nuclear weapons, Ukraine's integration into NATO, became the last straw. The "Ukrainian bridgehead" with its rabid Russophobic political line was the biggest and most dangerous geopolitical challenge for Russia. ^{[3, p. 26]}. The global military-political situation that had developed by the beginning of 2022 was characterized, first of all, by the total confrontation between Russia and the "collective West" and, alas, the interpretation of diplomatic rhetoric as a manifestation of national weakness. The point of view of some experts who argued that "public statements, military maneuvers, even the limited use of force can be perceived not as a confirmation of determination, but as an attempt to contain escalation and unwillingness to defend the stated preferences using all available means" ^{[6, p. 149]} seems justified. In the current conditions of increasing global confrontation and the impotence of diplomatic instruments, the use of armed forces has become not only necessary, but also justified.

Russian President Vladimir Putin called the denazification of Ukraine one of the two key tasks of Russia's special military operation. Denazification is the cleansing of society from the influence of Nazi ideology, the removal from power of the current political elite and severe punishment of its most odious representatives guilty of the policy of genocide of the Russian–speaking population ^{[3, p. 30]}. However, if the liberated territories are cleared of Nazi ideology, but the foundations are not laid for the formation of a new socio-political identity, the value, civilizational conflict will not only not be settled, but will only become even more complicated, passing into a latent stage. If you just clear Ukraine of the Nazis and their ideology, but leave the current Ukrainian identity unchanged, then after a relatively short time a new generation of neo–Nazis will grow up there - even angrier and more dangerous than the previous one.

In this regard, it is more reasonable to formulate the purpose of the special operation more broadly – not just denazification, but the formation of a new Ukrainian identity as a necessary condition for Russia's national security in the future. However, here, for brevity, we will refer to this process as "denazification".

Denazification itself is impossible without a whole range of measures of psychological and administrative impact on society and its institutions, and until its full completion, one should not expect full integration of the liberated territories into the socio-political space of the Russian Federation. In this regard, right now it seems fundamentally important to start asking questions about how exactly the process of denazification of the liberated territories of Ukraine could look like in practice, which bodies could deal with it, which documents regulating the procedural part should be developed, who and how will lead this process organizationally, what guarantees (including external ones) must be observed in order for this process to be launched at all and recognized as legitimate (and, consequently, irreversible), how to write new textbooks, make new TV shows, make new films, how, finally, by what specific criteria to assess the success of denazification?

Moreover, the task is not limited only to finding the most effective mechanisms of denazification. We also need thoughtful, constant and truly creative work on its theoretical and ideological support. The formation of a full–fledged new identity in the liberated territories previously controlled by the Ukrainian authorities is a necessary condition for Russia's national security.

History knows successful examples of such processes. These are, for example, the efforts of the allies for the socio-political reconstruction of post-war Germany and Austria. Then, during the Potsdam Conference in the summer of 1945, a consensus was reached between the victorious powers that the denazification of German and Austrian society should be of a complex nature, concerning not only the purely political sphere, but also culture, the press, economics, education and, of course, jurisprudence ^[4]. These are less studied socio-political processes of unification of north and south Vietnam. This is also the experience of the GDR's reintegration into Germany.

At the same time, any historical experience should be applied carefully, taking into account the actual specifics of the socio-political situation. Obviously, speaking of denazification, Russia will have to saturate this term with new content after the end of the acute phase of the Ukrainian conflict.

However, Russia should immediately take measures in this direction, at the same time taking into account that a distinctive feature of the transformation processes that have taken place in Ukraine recently is the duration and depth of anomie caused by the outpacing rates of decomposition of former social institutions in comparison with the formation of new ones, as well as the accelerated, abrupt nature of the current metamorphoses ^{[20, p. 35]}.

Despite the fact that no one has a detailed plan ready right now, our task is already to propose those mechanisms whose use looks justified.

Politics, civil service and lustration. The point of view that, in general, in Eastern Europe over the past decades, there has been an attempt (somewhere less, somewhere more successful) to actually dismantle the national state and replace it within the framework of the global economic order with supranational structures and regulators seems indisputable, but certainly noteworthy. It was assumed that such actors would be able to contribute more fully and effectively to globalization processes. At the same time, only in Ukraine did neoliberal globalization take place on such a peculiar basis as the ideology of absolute national superiority. Perhaps this is some exaggeration, but the Ukraine project itself took place only when it was almost officially given the name "Anti-Russia". The success of Ukraine as a state took place not in the economy, culture or politics, but in the anti-Russian ideology ^{[11, p. 13]}.

The researchers note that modern neo-Nazism in Ukraine exists in the form of several currents of right-wing radicals who cannot yet unite organizationally, overcome ideological contradictions and openly impose their ideology on the state. It is represented by dozens of small parties and movements, whose leaders are constantly making alliances with each other, then moving from cooperation to open war.

Radicals, although they remain outside the acceptance zone of society, are recognized by them as their own, homegrown, which is very seriously promoted by the political sphere, since part of the political establishment of Ukraine has grown together with right-wing radicals. And the majority of society in this regard does not realize the nature of the established political regime ^[2].

At the same time, it cannot be ruled out that the low level of popularity of the far-right among voters is also due to the fact that mainstream parties have appropriated part of their political program. The glorification of Ukrainian nationalists, decommunization, quotas for the use of the Russian language — all this has long been adopted by respectable politicians who publicly condemn neo-Nazism. Only they suggest not to fight and hang, but to build a new nation — but only with those who agree to forget that he is Russian, Jewish or "Donetsk" and will call himself exclusively Ukrainian.

If in Nazi Germany the NSDAP directly or indirectly controlled all spheres of society and had a developed bureaucratic apparatus, then, fortunately, such a level of control was unattainable for modern Ukrainian nationalists. For the Ukrainian establishment, they were rather an instrument of terror, used mainly to intimidate political competitors, to manipulate public consciousness.

A well-known interest in the considered key is the data of the study of public opinion of Russians about the existence of Nazi organizations in Ukraine, which are cited by VTsIOM. Thus, the overwhelming majority of our compatriots believe that there are organizations in Ukraine that profess the ideology of Nazism (88%), 70% of respondents agreed that the Ukrainian authorities rather support Nazi organizations, and another 76% of respondents said that Ukrainian neo-Nazis pose a threat to Russia and its citizens.

It should be noted that the situation with the "cleansing" of neo-Nazis in Ukrainian society is complicated by their weak institutionalization, loose structure and high personnel instability. In addition, there are a certain number of political pragmatists in the ranks of ultra–right organizations, for whom participation in the work of the movement itself is a career springboard - and nothing more. An example of such political flexibility is the deputy of the Verkhovna Rada Ilya Kiva, whom many in Russia perceive as a fighter against the ultra-right. Despite the fact that in the past he was the head of the Poltava center of the "Right Sector" and an adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov, which later did not prevent him from running for the Ukrainian parliament on the lists of the openly pro–Russian "Opposition Platform - For Life" ^[16].

In this regard, it is necessary that all Ukrainian parties, without exception, were banned in the liberated territories, and at the same time, a lustration procedure should be launched against officials, politicians, public and other activists, especially those who openly supported the views and policies of the Right Sector, Svoboda, nationalist battalions and etc . At the same time, those officials and politicians who successfully pass this procedure will have to pass a certain exam on knowledge of the legislation of the Republics of Donbass and, obviously, Russia. This seems especially relevant, because both the authorities of the DPR and the LPR in the public field constantly emphasize their strategic goal to become part of the Russian Federation, and in some liberated territories they are increasingly talking about the desire to join Russia. Strictly speaking, the processes related in one way or another to lustration, with the replacement of administrative and political personnel, have already been launched in the liberated territories of Ukraine (and they are reported by both Western and Russian media), but in the conditions of ongoing hostilities, they certainly lack consistency.

At the same time, in order to effectively carry out lustration, it is necessary at least to have a trustworthy body independent of local authorities (and local arbitrariness), which would have the appropriate powers and resources to carry out the necessary measures. So far, the problem of the formation of such bodies has not only not been solved, but even, as far as we know, has not been posed. In the defeated fascist Germany, special courts were created for similar purposes, which existed both outside the judicial system of Germany and outside the system of military tribunals that tried cases of German war crimes.

It is necessary to be prepared for the fact that a significant part of the representatives of the former political elites will leave the territories that have chosen a vector for historical constructive interaction with the Russian Federation. The vacuum thus formed will be actively filled by young intellectuals, whose mission will be to regulate the development of new models and stereotypes of socially significant and approved behavior in the context of changing paradigms of public life. At the same time, it is obvious that at the first stage this nascent political class will relate to the elite only by formal criteria and, in particular, will be characterized primarily by insufficient efficiency caused by a lack of experience, knowledge and effective use of mechanisms of social interaction, especially in a constantly transforming environment.

Here we can recall a historical precedent: after the unification of the FRG and the GDR, officials from the western regions began to arrive in East Germany en masse in order to head all local authorities. Former citizens of the GDR who worked in these positions, who were party activists, were actually left out of public life and were not involved in solving any significant issues of the new state-building, were deprived of the opportunity to continue their careers in the public sector of the united Germany [Polonsky 2016: 1].

Mass media. The Ukrainian media in the liberated territories must either change their editorial policy or stop their work. Modern Ukrainian media is a conveyor for the production of fake news and a tool of public manipulation. For the practical realization of the stated goal, it is necessary to create such conditions for the work of the media, in which the relevant work will be based on the separation of the concepts of "truth" and "truth". The fact is that these concepts have objectively different ontological basis. "Truth" refers to objective reality, is a criterion of scientific character, and "truth" refers to the world of social relations created by society itself, appeals to the understanding of social justice, ideas about possible and desirable trends in the further development of society. Therefore, "truth" is always emotionally colored, it combines both cognitive and evaluative aspects and compensates with its emotional attractiveness for the relativity of the justification of "truth" in the process of cognition ^{[21, p. 42]}.

On the existing and newly created information platforms, it is necessary to form new professional teams of specialists loyal to the new government, who need to be assigned the following tasks:

- reformatting of the information space with systematic work on the creation of information content aimed at debunking the ideas of nationalism, myths and legends imposed on Ukrainian society based on the opposition of Ukraine and Russia;

- the eradication of nationalist sentiments and tendencies in society, the explanation of political, military, humanitarian and economic crimes of the regime and the formation of the image of the enemy from the former elite;

- substantiation of the insolvency of the European vector of development of Ukraine, the hostility of the Western world, using Ukraine exclusively as a battering ram against Russia;

- debunking Russophobia, propaganda of the ideas of Russian unity, historical and national community of Russia and Ukraine, the need for their cultural, economic and ideological integration ^[1].

Technical means of transmitting information should be nationalized (of course, here we use this term not in its classical legal sense) in favor of the new government. The spread of Nazism and nationalism through the mass media and other mass public institutions should be equated with incitement to ethnic hatred and criminally punished. Specialists who formed Nazi information content should be removed from the information space with a ban on engaging in professional activities in the relevant fields.

Similar measures in terms of content should be taken in relation to artists, cinema, music and other areas forming public opinion. The introduction (at least at the first stage) of effective Internet censorship also seems justified.

"Soft power". In the cultural sense, the border is always the existence between two struggling identities, it is a marker of the identity of socio-cultural groups. The processes of intercultural interaction between different cultures, different civilizations, lead to the formation of special zones of cultural borderlands, the specificity of which is expressed primarily in the fact that it is here that the image of the Other is created, which embodies the type of disorganization of cultural and public space that is detrimental to this culture, this social structure, this civilizational model. For the last few centuries, Ukraine has been acting precisely as such a borderland as the western border of Russian civilization and, at the same time, the eastern border of European civilization ^{[7, p. 125]}. Russian Russian identity has not been in vain repeated attempts of the last decades to change the Russian identity of Ukrainians to the European one, the necessary prerequisites have been formed here for cultural alienation from Russia, Russian civilization, for replacing the Russian civilizational identity with the European one. Russian Russian identity was formed here as an area of fierce rejection of the Russian as Another, repulsion, disgust from Russian culture.

Academician D.S. Likhachev points out that in this case there is always a loss of the living force of culture: "By contrasting itself with the 'other', culture for the most part simplifies itself, puts forward banners with symbols and signs of its individuality, encapsulates itself in myths about 'national character', 'national ideas', 'national destiny', etc. The losses are great, because all this can be associated ... with increased self-esteem, with the development of aggressiveness towards "others" and ultimately within oneself and against oneself" ^{[9, pp. 97, 98]}.

Russian Russian researchers note that for modern Ukrainian culture, another is a parishioner of the Russian Orthodox Church, a native speaker of modern Russian culture and the Russian language. This is exactly the image of the Other used by the Ukrainian media in military propaganda against the republics of Donbass, which have been de facto at war with Ukraine since 2014. At the same time, it should not be forgotten that in the hot phase of this war there was a direct destruction of cultural objects: schools, libraries, museums, cultural centers, temples, etc. ^{[7, p. 130]}.

In recent years, in the territories of the DPR and LPR controlled by Ukraine, the ideologists of Ukrainians have formed the main Donetsk mythologeme: Donbass is not a Russian, but a Russified Ukrainian region that does not understand this and does not want to return to the bosom of Ukrainian culture only because it is inhabited mainly by "uneducated cattle" who are unable to learn their "native" language and realize the beauty of Ukrainian whistles and hopaks. ^{[22, p. 135]}.

The doctrine of the "Russian Donbass", officially promulgated in 2021 and interpreted as "a system of officially accepted views in the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics that determine their ideology, vector of development and the basis for socio-political forecasting", was called to resist this and other similar mythologems. It has not yet had time to play its full role, but many of the things postulated in it should certainly be used, now extending not only to the DPR and LPR, but also to all other liberated and liberated Ukrainian territories. Russian Russian Doctrine structurally consists of three blocks – political, historical and axiological, each of which equally provides a justification for the civilizational, cultural and mental unity of the part of the Russian people living in the Donbass with Russians in Russia itself and beyond. Russian Russian Doctrine for the first time in the Russian political language establishes the perception in the public space of the residents of Donbass as part of the Russian political nation, which, for natural and historical reasons, seeks to reunite with Russia as the only historical state of the Russian nation. Russian Russian republics, as an outpost of the Russian nation, are recognized as having an important mission, which is being consolidated in the fight against the expansion of the West, expressed, among other things, in support of Ukrainian ethnocratic statehood, for the Russians who remained in Ukraine, for the liberation from occupation of the entire Novorossiya as a Russian national territory. At the moment, the republics of Donbass are, for objective reasons, a kind of experimental platform for the Russian future, so the period of their independent existence is important in its own way for "big" Russia. Russian Russian nation, any political formations that include Russians and are not Russia, are only temporary," the path to the future of the DPR and the LPR (and then, of course, the Russian state formation created with their participation in the territories of historical Novorossiya), which is a way to the future of the DPR and the LPR (and then, of course, the Russian state formation created with their participation in the territories of historical Novorossiya), which at this stage, it is happening together with Russia, in its finale it implies a full-fledged entry into the historical homeland. Of course, for the multimillion Russian community living in the territory occupied by the ethnocratic state of Ukraine, the Doctrine was intended to be a clear signal that there are forces ready to deal with issues of humanitarian, social, human rights, political and other support for this community, and that such forces are ready to take responsibility, certainly associated with such a proactive political position. It was in the Doctrine that the idea of the need to seek the withdrawal of the Novorossiysk regions from Ukraine with the liquidation of the existing post-Maidan Ukrainian statehood and the subsequent creation of a new Russian state there was ideologically embodied. The importance of the Doctrine cannot be overestimated, especially in the light of the absence of similar official-level documents conceptually reflecting the regional aspects of Russian national meta-ideology and representing the first successful attempt to introduce its individual components into official political discourse. Being a natural result of joint ideological searches of the LDPR civil society and the Russian national movement in Russia, the Doctrine, based on the historical, socio-cultural, mental, value and sociolinguistic characteristics of the people of Donbass, postulates their unchanging Russianness, generalizes, explains and promotes the legitimization of their irredentist aspirations ^{[18, pp. 128, 131-133]}.

The key problem has been the language problem for several years. In the aspect of denazification under consideration, it has also not lost its relevance. Russian Russian as the ideological basis of the Russian worldview seems to have no alternative to the need for registration at the legislative and everyday levels of the Russian language. As it is rightly said, "the mentality, which is largely determined by social conditions, is expressed in the linguistic characteristics of the nation, folk ways of social communication, etc. Language, in turn, has a certain influence on the process of formation and functioning of the social mentality and mentality of an individual" ^{[14, p. 57]}.

The most problematic aspect of the problem under consideration, of course, is the youth, whose worldview was formed in the face of a significant defeat by nationalist propaganda and the education system, which denies historical facts and trends, forming a perverted understanding of the future of Ukraine. To offset such an impact, reformatting of the school and higher education system will be required, the development of a special set of administrative, educational and informational measures, including the replacement and retraining of university and school teachers, the revision of scientific, historical and educational programs, the development by Russian scientists and the introduction into the Ukrainian education system of new history textbooks that reveal the true past of this territory and people ^[1]. Russian culture in the broadest sense should be immediately returned to the liberated territories. This is obviously one of the key areas of denazification. Already now we see reports that teaching staff from the liberated territories are invited to Crimea for internships and retraining in accordance with Russian educational programs and methods, that the Ministry of Education of Russia will send school textbooks to the liberated territories to prepare for the new academic year, and in Mariupol, for example, the first ones are already opening schools in Russian. These initiatives are certainly worth welcoming, but so far they are frankly disparate initiatives at the local, regional or – at best – departmental levels. This allows us to conclude that there is not yet a single approach, a single program at the state level - and this circumstance should be recognized as a serious miscalculation, a flaw that can call into question all other good initiatives for denazification. And, on the other hand, due to the lack of proper state attention to the problem, regional and local initiatives in this matter, going without proper bureaucratic control, can be sabotaged or even perverted – consciously or due to the insufficient level of competence of the performers. All these risks are quite real, they should not be neglected.

Examining the already mentioned historical experience of the unification of the FRG and the GDR, it should be noted that the system of public education of the eastern lands underwent a serious purge there. West German officials sent here established the degree of trustworthiness of the teaching staff of higher educational institutions, school teachers, and other education workers. The "unreliable" were denied the opportunity to work in the relevant fields. Especially it was not hidden that the West Germans, thus, provide the necessary conditions for the formation of a "new worldview", "new cultural values" in the East ^[15].

Analyzing possible mechanisms of denazification in the context of "soft power", it is worth noting the important role of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. It seems indisputable that in the conditions of aggravation of geopolitical competition, religious and political processes are actively subjected to manipulative and technological influence (which we observed several years ago when creating the "autocephalous" Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which was formally declared "independent", but in fact turned out to be just a political project subordinated to Constantinople, deprived of most of the rights traditionally inherent in autocephalous churches ^{[8, p. 971]}, another element of the complex system of squeezing Ukraine out of the sphere of influence of Russia and consistently moving into the geopolitical space controlled by the United States and the EU). Currently, there are two competing Orthodox churches in Ukraine – the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (which controls about 12,000 parishes in the country and recognizes the primacy of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia) and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which controls about 6,200 parishes and is loyal to the current Kiev administration ^{[12, p. 30]}.

It should be taken into account that the religious and cultural space has a significant impact not only on the individual worldview, but also on the political consciousness and behavior of large masses of people, and religious and political processes are built into the modern system of international relations ^{[19, p. 41]}. It is obvious that in the liberated territories, the activities of the PCU, as a primarily political project, at the first stage should be accompanied by careful monitoring by the authorities, as well as representatives of the UOC-MP. At the second stage, it is necessary, with the involvement of the church community, to consider the expediency and forms of termination of the activities of the OCU, since the problem of church autocephaly itself is artificially politicized and rests on the same foundation of opposition to Russianness as the national Ukrainian movement as a whole.

Restoration of historical memory. Russian Russian World concept, which went to the periphery of public consciousness in 2022, was based primarily on three key concepts: Orthodoxy, Russian culture and the Russian language, the commonality of historical memory and views on social development ^{[17, p. 163]}. As part of the restoration of historical memory, it is necessary to change the toponymy associated with the former ideology in cities, industrial and cultural facilities. Historical memory is the foundation of identity, it is not so much mass knowledge about the past, as the perception of it as a heritage, which becomes an instrumental value, contributes to the formation of consciousness of young people, students, forming in them knowledge, views, representation and understanding of the links between the past, present and future, traditions and experiences of different generations. It helps future generations, which are already being formed today, to identify universal values, to be critical of the world historical experience, to learn its lessons, to develop their own beliefs and civic position ^{[21, p. 42, 44]}.

Historical memory, if it is not fixated on various national, social and state traumas, the search for enemies, witch hunts, etc., is capable of cementing society even in an extremely aggressive external environment, offering a system of symbols acceptable to it and potentially promising for progressive development. At the same time, in the conditions of the information war, which will obviously escalate regardless of the tactical and strategic results of the special military operation in Ukraine, it is necessary to refrain from speculating on history, juggling mass consciousness in favor of momentary interests. The key task here is the transition from confrontation and the struggle of myths to the consideration of various interpretations of events. Rejection of falsifications, fight against manipulation – actual requirements for historical memory ^{[21, p. 43, 44]}.

The symbolic part of denazification seems to be critically important. The actualization of symbolic space is able to consolidate a wide range of different social groups around itself. It is the symbols that perform the functions of communication between society and existing political institutions, promote awareness of group membership, promote self-organization and self-government of citizens, including for the purpose of protecting the symbolic space from attempts to distort it caused by an aggressive political and ideological environment. Such symbols should be both official, for example, the coat of arms, the anthem, state rituals and traditions, the award system, and unofficial (holidays, symbolic dates, places of worship and veneration, legends, etc.). It is important that they reflect the current and future state of society, are understandable to people and are in demand by them.

It should be understood that the new identity is the result of a long and painstaking work of all creative forces that need to unite in the current extremely unfavorable conditions. Historical experience shows that, for example, during the denazification of Germany, it was external influence that played a decisive role. Within the capitulated Third Reich itself, there were no internal healthy forces capable of building a new society on any other than Nazi foundations. The process of in–depth, reflexive denazification stretched for many years - and this despite the fact that the Third Reich itself existed for only less than 13 years ^[4]. Analyzing what is happening in Ukraine today, it is difficult not to agree that the current denazification will be very difficult, that it will be possible to talk about any practical, tangible results only when at least one denazified generation grows up, or even two. That is, about a period of about a quarter of a century.

Everything that is happening now in Ukraine should be perceived as a clash of civilizations in the way that the American political scientist S. Huntington wrote about almost thirty years ago. According to his concept, in the world after the end of the cold war, it is civilizational and cultural values that determine the models of integration, disintegration and conflict. Russian Russian identity That is why many regions of Ukraine, historically formed as part of the native Russian world, have preserved their Russian identity even in the conditions of forced Ukrainization.

In his work "Clash of Civilizations" S. Huntington, in particular, identified eight civilizations, including Russia in the "Orthodox" or "Orthodox-Slavic" civilization. At the same time, the Russian Federation is a core state, that is, a state around which other representatives of this civilization unite. Thus, the role of the core state is extremely high – it should unite and rally other, weaker, smaller states from its civilization, and also take care of them like an "older brother" ^{[23, p. 25]}.

It is very appropriate to recall the words of Vladimir Putin, who, speaking about Ukrainians and Russians, stressed: "Our kinship is passed down from generation to generation. It is in the hearts, in the memory of people living in modern Russia and Ukraine, in the blood ties that unite millions of our families. Together we have always been and will be many times stronger and more successful. After all, we are one people."

Russia, and this is universally recognized, made a very large bet with the beginning of a special military operation in Ukraine. Now it is clear that it is possible to successfully get out of this conflict only if the current crisis becomes the last stage in the development of the existing world order, the unipolar world. That is, it is not the "civilized world" that should push Russia out of a certain common civilizational coordinate system, but this vicious coordinate system itself should cease to exist, and a new system based on other principles other than those that the "world community" has postulated over the past few decades should replace it ^{[11, p. 11]}. It is obvious that the "Ukrainian problem" is only part of the existing and objectively demanding modernization and transformation of the model of Russia's dialogue with the countries of Europe and, more globally, the North Atlantic Alliance, complicated by the fact that "... in modern relations between Russia and the West in the post-Soviet space there is a stalemate. The steps taken by one of the parties are "by definition" perceived by the other side as hostile" ^{[10, p. 62]}. Modernization and transformation of Ukrainian society, its total denazification should become the point from which not only the construction of a new system of European and global security will begin, but also a new, more modern world order, sustainable, fair and allowing to respond effectively to modern global challenges.