Four years ago today, the war in Ukraine began. I witnessed its start in the central part of the country, having left Irpin just two weeks prior. Around 5 a.m., we woke up to the sound of an explosion. Hundreds more would follow. The first months were incredibly intense. It was terrifying. Adrenaline was off the charts. I will never forget that sense of cohesion and mutual support. So much of it was voluntary. No one told anyone what to do. Everyone acted according to their strength and understanding. Everyone calculated the risks and made their own decisions. Those first four months were a model of grassroots, decentralized resistance. Then, the State began to spread its wings, and everything started to sour. Centralized planning, a monopoly state army, a strict chain of command. The war increasingly shifted from defending one’s family, home, street, and the local bakery into the defense of abstract constructs (the state, the nation) 500 kilometers away. Personal interests were replaced by propaganda and geopolitics. Back then, it was hard for me to grasp what was happening, but my intuition whispered that something was going wrong. At that time, I didn’t yet distinguish between society, individual interests, and the State. I thought the State would take care of things and do its best to protect me. How wrong I was. As the front stabilized and the war shifted from maneuver to trench warfare, things worsened. Under the pretext of an external threat and the need for "unity," the government began to drastically curtail rights. People found themselves trapped, feeling more and more like tools in someone else’s game. The military was turning into a "collective farm" of slaves - it had always been that way, but now it became glaringly obvious. Grassroots initiative and that "Cossack spirit" have been replaced by state propaganda and predatory, statist methods. Yes, motivated volunteers remain in the army, but they are now a minority and are no longer the ones driving the process. Yes, the ruzzian putins regime illegally attacked Ukrainian cities and people. They are bastards, and they can burn in hell. But we Ukrainians through our lack of understanding, our fear, and our slave mentality nurtured and submitted to our own Leviathan. It has begun to devour us, turning grassroots resistance into a war of one criminal syndicate against another. This was fueled not only by Ukrainians but also by EU bureaucrats and the US with their damn geopolitics. Entering the fourth year of the war, I am filled with sadness, bitterness, and disappointment. I paid dearly for my naivety. But there are also gains. I have become stronger, more resistant to state propaganda, and freer. There are many decent Ukrainians fighting on two fronts: against Putin’s predatory regime and against our own "parasites" in Kyiv. It is incredibly difficult to endure. Even if it’s impossible to stop the war because Putin doesn’t want to, Ukrainians must be given the chance to defend their property as they see fit or not to defend it if the price is unacceptable to them. Private armies, open borders, ending mobilization, the legalization of weapons, the reduction of state regulation and propaganda returning agency and that energy from the first days would help immensely. But this likely won't happen because humanity, and Ukrainians are no exception, is held captive by a religion called statism. So, it is what it is. I want this war to end as soon as possible. For people of goodwill, it brings nothing good. It only enriches psychopaths and other pathological scum. Like yeast, the state grows on war, penetrating your pockets, your mind, taking your time, your present, and your future. The only way out of this darkness is to attain personal sovereignty which is what I am doing, and what I wish for everyone. Freedom and dignity will win I hope they will win. PS. On a picture Molotov cocktails we were making as civilians in first days of war. #war #warinukraine #freedom #resistance