Author: Tymofii Brik
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Another surprising miscalculation. I often see that Ukrainians (officials, media, scholars, NGO) are often perceived and treated exclusively as eye witnesses, a biased part of the conflict. This, their data, ideas and narratives are immediately disregard which is weird, because this underlying assumption is only a part of the story. People working in social science know it very well. We all are biases and not neutral, but we have protocols and tools to address these biases and control for them. The biggest problem here is that Ukrainians have a significant expertise, and people throw it away because they don't know how to identify and control biases. This is not efficient. Examples of expertise are:
This is not the first Russian invasion to Ukraine, there are many diplomats (under 2 different presidents) who participated in negotiasions with Russians. Local journalists covered it, local think-tanks worked on strategies etc.
Dozens of NGO have worked with displaced people. They also worked with people who were imprisoned and tortured in Luhansk and Donetsk, they collected data on people who disappeared or died.
Ukraine developed formal democratic institutions that do not exist in many post-soviet countries. Perhaps we know a thing or two about democratic development
Ukraine was a testing ground for Russian cyber and information warfare since 2015. We know their playbook and have developed some strategies.
We have a normal war economy. With many challenges of course, but the parliament is able to vote, central bank is working, trains are running, local governments function, groceries are open etc.
Our military has expertise of dealing with Russians. They saw a "safe corridor" in Ilovaisk in 2014. They know the mentality and playbooks of Russian soldiers.
Most importantly, Ukrainians have developed a fine tuned bullshit detector to see Russia for what it is. We don't take their words at face value and have many tools to verify their true intentions. We know their language, we know their informal institutions
For us, words like "common Russians" or "not all Russians are the same" have very tangible meaning. Our survival depends on our ability to read signals and identify honest intentions. We have developed many informal rules and "red flags" . That is why ukrainians were
cautious about that "brave Russian journalist". The thing is she also recorded a message, which was just a compilation of imperialistic cliches about "brethren nations". For us this is a very strong "red flag", while western partners do not even look there
Everyday I hear patronizing words "you just have to start talking, you have to see that not all Russians are the same, Dostoevsky! Tolstoy!" But they are preaching to the choir. We now this. We talked, and we developed strategies to analyze their words. The point is
Western partners must realize that they don't have expertise in many domains where they patronize. Instead they have to update their priors and take our protocols seriously. We are open to teach a workshop or run a summer school
Ukr voices cannot be dismissed on the premise that they are biased. Democratic institutions have many formal rules to accommodate people with different opinions. It is 100% possible to include non-neutral voices. Especially if they have expertise which others don't
Typos typos typos...sorry about that.