Small conflicts, big shadows: how public attention is diverted from the problems that determine Ukraine’s future

Ukrainians are increasingly offered a strange picture of “justice” in which the state fines a kitten seller, a pedestrian without a flicker or threatens villagers for an unregistered vegetable garden, but the corruption stories of top officials after high-profile searches, tapes, suspicions and resonance gradually disappear into the shadows without a clear ending. The public is shown a spectacular start to the fight against corruption, but rarely is an answer given as to which of the influential figures actually bore responsibility, which cases led to convictions and why minor administrative conflicts receive more publicity than the problems that determine the future of Ukraine. In this information noise, the most dangerous thing is that minor scandals take away the attention, emotions and time of society, leaving the main question unanswered: who is taking advantage of the silence while the country argues about secondary matters.

Scandals instead of responsibility: how petty bans and show cases crowd out important issues

Ukrainian society has received a strange picture of state priorities: officials are worried about the reputation of the parliament, officials are being taught standards of correct language, villagers are being scared by the loss of undecorated vegetable gardens, pedestrians are being fined for the lack of reflective elements, and the tax office is fining a kitten seller over the Internet. Against this background, major anti-corruption stories related to energy, searches, tapes, suspicions, and political names are gradually getting lost in the stream of new irritants that constantly shift society’s attention.

Ruslan Stefanchuk’s statement that law enforcement officers should refrain from making loud public statements about people’s deputies has become one of the most revealing episodes of this political logic. The Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada explained his position by concern for the reputation of the parliament as an institution, but society heard a different signal in these words: the problem is proposed to be sought not in the behavior of deputies who appear in criminal proceedings, but in the fact that citizens learn about crimes.

This formulation of the question looks especially acute in a country where trust in the authorities is based on the ability of institutions to be responsible for their own decisions. The reputation of the parliament is destroyed not by reports from law enforcement officers or publications in the media, but by suspicions of crimes, backroom work, privileges and the impression that the political class seeks to create softer rules of publicity.

At the same time, the decision of the Accessibility Council to promote the State Standard of Correct Language for Officials caused a sharp reaction due to the unfortunate context. In a country where war consumes resources every day, the budget is in dire straits, and military and volunteers constantly complain about a lack of funding, another emphasis on language instructions for officials is a demonstration of a disconnect from reality.

The problem is not the idea of ​​​​correct language itself, because respect for people with disabilities and low-mobility groups is important. However, the state is once again eager to regulate words, while ramps, elevators, accessible transportation, the provision of jobs and real inclusion often remain at the level of promises. Changing terms without changing the environment turns an important topic into a bureaucratic exercise that looks good in reports but changes people’s lives little.

A separate concern is the risk of excessive language control in documents and state institutions. If correctness begins to work as a set of mandatory formulas, any mistake can become a reason for claims, official punishments or legal disputes. The unalternative imposition of the “only correct” words artificially narrows linguistic diversity, impoverishes the language, and can lead to stigmatization of people who use traditional or colloquial forms without malicious intent. In addition, any accidental error in wording in an official document can lead to its cancellation, lawsuits, or administrative penalties for civil servants.

Also, information about the possible seizure of unregistered land plots and vegetable gardens has hurt rural residents, for whom a few hundred square meters of land are extremely important. For many families, a vegetable garden remains a way of survival, especially during war, rising food prices, and falling incomes. Land documents for a person in the city may seem like a technical procedure, but for a villager it is a complicated procedure due to queues, registers, notaries, lack of the Internet, poor transport, and misunderstanding of the new rules. In such conditions, the state, which threatens to lose a plot of land due to an untimely issued piece of paper, looks strict towards the weak and too patient towards the strong.

Constant reports from the police about fining pedestrians for the lack of reflective elements in the dark are also perceived painfully by society. The very idea of ​​road safety does not cause objections, but people are outraged by the approach: instead of handing out cheap flickers in villages, schools, communities and near highways, the law enforcement system again chooses a fine. Reflective tape costs little, but for a person with a minimum pension or unstable income, a fine becomes a tangible blow. This way of caring for safety has a flavor of fiscal convenience, because it is easier to punish than to organize prevention.

A story from Kropyvnytskyi, where a speech activist called the police because of a complaint about a saleswoman who signed her product: “cauliflower,” gained wide publicity in the media. The woman decided that the Ukrainian name for the vegetable was Russian surzhyk, and demanded to replace it with “colorful”, although experts explained that the normative name is “cauliflower”, which is associated with the word “flower” and the structure of the inflorescence.

The resonance in the Poltava region, where the tax office discovered a woman selling purebred kittens online without registering her business, also fit into the general picture. From the point of view of the law, regular sales of goods or services must be registered, and taxes must be paid. However, the public reaction arose due to the contrast between the scale of the violation and the persistence of the state machine, which fines ordinary citizens for minor offenses and at the same time does not punish top corrupt officials.

When the tax office demonstrates activity towards small online sellers, people inevitably compare this with large schemes, shadow flows, corruption stories and years of impunity for figures close to power. Against this background, the kitten seller becomes a convenient object for demonstrative principledness, because she has no political protection, media resources, and strong lawyers in high offices.

The wide discussion around the dismantling of monuments, in particular to Mikhail Bulgakov, opens up another line of social tension. The writer, who was born in Kyiv, became world famous thanks to his unique literary style, which combined mysticism, satire, philosophy, and deep psychologism. His works “Heart of a Dog,” “Fatal Eggs,” and others became a brilliant prophecy and criticism of the Soviet experiment in creating a “new man.” For many people, Bulgakov remains a great compatriot and a classic who glorified Kyiv throughout the world, and literary disputes are a natural part of the perception of a difficult historical era. In his work, he did not leave any calls for the destruction or suppression of Ukrainian culture. His conflict was not with Ukraine, but with the Bolsheviks and the general madness of the era of revolutions.

These and other scandals have one thing in common – they distract the attention of society’s emotions and time, leaving unanswered the main question: who is taking advantage of the silence while the country argues about secondary matters.

How big things drown in small annoyances

A steady trend is observed in Ukraine: as soon as public fatigue allows for a new portion of high-profile spectacle, there are searches with cameras, statements, politicians “accidentally” present at the city events, emotional comments and another outbreak in the media. After that, the people’s attention is again scattered, and the main question remains unanswered: who really bore responsibility and what systemic decisions were made after the loud revelations.

While society argues about language standards, vegetable gardens, flickers, cabbage, kittens and monuments, stories that should have remained in the spotlight for much longer fade into the background. Energoatom, “Mindichgate”, Yermak, suspicions, searches, tapes, political connections and loud press conferences of the NABU are turning into a series with loud trailers, where each new scene overlaps the previous one, although the real consequences for high-ranking officials remain invisible to most citizens.

Despite the huge number of high-profile anti-corruption cases, which in recent years have regularly been in the spotlight, it is increasingly difficult to understand how investigations end after a wave of loud statements, showy searches and hours of television broadcasts. The names of the scandals, the names of the defendants and footage of the operational shooting remain in the memory of citizens, while the further fate of high-profile cases gradually disappears from the information field and is forgotten.

Since each new information wave replaces the previous one, society is actually deprived of the opportunity to track the result. Even people who closely follow political news often cannot answer which cases are already in court, which have been closed, where the investigation is ongoing, and where high-profile accusations have not yet turned into verdicts. The impression of incompleteness is only strengthened by the fact that the information coverage of the initial stage of investigations is incomparably more extensive than the coverage of their results. While dozens of TV channels and hundreds of websites report on the search, only a narrow circle of people often learn about the further progress of the case, court decisions or the lack of such decisions.

Against this background, the Forbes rating of the largest owners of commercial real estate in Ukraine was passed without any discussion. The list of the largest rentiers was topped by Tomasz Fiala, the owner of Dragon Capital, whose portfolio includes business centers, retail facilities, and logistics complexes. Fiala is called the country’s “largest rentier” – a person whose business is largely related to the ownership and leasing of large commercial spaces. Before the full-scale war, Dragon Capital’s portfolio exceeded 700,000 sq. m. The company lost some of its assets due to Russian shelling, in particular warehouse complexes near Kyiv, but even after these losses, the group retained its position as one of the key owners of real estate in Ukraine. For years, Dragon Capital bought troubled or undervalued assets from banks, developers and other owners. This gradually created a large pool of office, retail and logistics infrastructure, which brought the company to the top of the market.

Other big players appeared in the ranking alongside Fiala: the infamous Oleksandr and Galina Geregay with the Epicenter chain, Vagif Aliyev with large shopping malls, Rinat Akhmetov with the assets of ESTA Holding and Viktor Polishchuk with Gulliver. This list shows that during the war the large real estate market did not freeze in ruins, because the largest owners surprisingly adapted to the new conditions much faster than ordinary citizens, who during the same period were being explained the risks of losing unregistered land or fined for minor violations.

Rinat Akhmetov stands out in this situation, whose business empire, after heavy losses at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, was able to stabilize. The energy sector, electricity trading, the work of mining and processing plants, sea exports and the profitability of the banking sector became factors that allowed SCM to maintain its financial weight during the war. For society, such data should have been an occasion for a serious conversation about the war economy, tariffs, monopoly profits and the rules of the game for big capital, but this topic quickly disappeared among smaller scandals.

No less revealing is the story of Maksym Krippa, a Ukrainian entrepreneur, investor, and one of the country’s least public multimillionaires, whom Forbes called one of the most aggressive investors in the real estate market during wartime. Before the full-scale war, his presence in such ratings was not noticeable, but after February 2022, he began to gain control over large assets, including the Parus business center, the Ukraine hotel, the International Exhibition Center, and a stake in the DIM development group. Such a speed of entry into large real estate during the war deserves much more public questions than it received.

Against the backdrop of the war, a situation becomes especially dangerous, in which public attention is increasingly focused on minor conflicts, disputes, and high-profile informational occasions. At the same time, issues of the efficiency of public administration, the use of budget funds, the course of high-profile anti-corruption investigations, the concentration of large assets, and the consequences of government decisions recede into the background. As a result, the country receives an endless stream of new stimuli that quickly replace each other, but bring almost no closer to answers to questions on which the course of the war, the state of the economy, and citizens’ trust in state institutions directly depend.