The new abnormal

About a week before the fourth anniversary of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Natalya Gumenyuk wrote a guest essay for the New York Times When Will This War End? The Question Is Meaningless. Gumenyuk, an investigative journalist who spends a significant amount of time close to the frontlines and a no less significant amount writing and speaking about the war internationally, shared the link to this publication on her Facebook page. She still found the text relevant, even though its publication was delayed by more than six months: ‘I wrote it after Alaska, but the editors kept thinking something would happen. Maybe in Riyadh, maybe in Florida…’1

It is not entirely clear what made the editors finally publish this essay. Was it the pressure of 24 February approaching? Or did they eventually get disappointed by Trump’s peacemaking talents and decide not to wait for yet another Geneva? Or maybe both. One way or another, this perplexity only supported Gumenyuk’s observation shared in the essay: ‘It can seem that the world watches Russia’s war on Ukraine as if it were a film. When attention wanes, there is a demand for an ending – if not good, then bad. For Ukrainians, this is not cinema but reality. It will last as long as it lasts.’

Apparently, she did not write this simply to pinpoint the difference between the two realities –maybe even the two planets: Ukraine and the rest of the world. In the last four years, a lot has already been written about this, both bitter and hopeful, critical and apologetic. I see it as an attempt to close the gap, or at least narrow it, by pointing out the utter meaninglessness of the question about the timing of this war’s end, and by this, aspiring to set the common agenda.

She brings up two crucial points. As much as Ukraine and the West want, need and should strive to end this war, what really matters is not when it ends, but, in quoting the crane operator from a pipe plant near Zaporizhzhia, ‘how’. And, probably more importantly, after four years of the full-scale invasion and twelve year of the war, Ukrainian society is reaching a point where it is no longer postponing real life until the war ends and has started living with the war and through the war now, as long as it lasts.

Serhiy Zhadan, a writer and, since 2024, a sergeant in the Ukrainian National Guard, provides yet another perspective on both ending the war and living with it. In his speech ‘Ten Theses about the Future’ delivered at the Munich Security Conference in February 2026, he said: ‘We must be prepared for this. When it ends, the war usually does not end. It is very important to understand that we will have to deal with its ghosts and shadows for a very long time.’

The future he describes has the war – as lived experience, as memory, as trauma, as a shattered and, hopefully, rebuilt world order – written into it. This future is not perceived as a deferred past. There, the war is no longer a rupture, an interruption to the natural course of things. It is the reality, the unnatural course of things, where, according to Zhadan,‘the future will consist of us—who we are, what remains of us, what we will be able to become’.

Is it a brave or a desperate step to suggest bringing the ghosts and shadows of the war into the future, to legalize them, to share them? Is it just a political call for a shared agenda? Or the only step that could avoid constant self-delusion? Zhadan writes:

‘This war, the first major war of the twenty-first century, has shown that the world is too connected by its past not to build a future based on shared security and trust. And that today, helping victims of armed aggression is not doing them a favor but building a shared space of normality and reciprocity. No matter how much some people might wish otherwise, a fire on a ship affects all passengers, regardless of the ticket class.’

From the flow of recent introspections and addresses about living with the war, perhaps the most radical – or just painfully honest – is the essay by historian and writer Olena Styazhkina, written – unlike the two texts I’ve already brought in here – for a Ukrainian readership. Styazhkina, a former history professor of Donetsk National University, was temporarily displaced after the occupation of the east of Ukraine in 2014 (the university was displaced as well), which in real language means that she lost her home, possibly forever. From this long perspective of living with war, she boldly insists on the positive normalization of it.

Styazhkina writes: ‘Normalization does not mean accepting the war as a good thing, but rather incorporating it into strategic thinking and management models. War becomes a factor that is taken into account in planning, just like climate risks, the labor market, or demographics.’ She also calls the ongoing war ‘routinization’, stressing that, de facto, it has already happened: millions of people wake up in the morning after yet another Russian aerial strike, with little heating or electricity, and go to work, to school, shopping, to theatres and bars. She tells a Ukrainian wartime joke: ‘I don’t care what it is – bombing, blackout, alien invasion, comet, meteorite, water shortage. I just need it to be on time.’

Styazhkina’s suggestion to incorporate the war into long-term thinking also renders the question of the war’s end obsolete: no matter when, how, or whether this war ends, it has already changed society and the way it sees itself and its future forever. It also means that the present stops being just an unfortunate pause between the past and the future. It becomes a continuum where society learns to be together in a constant flow of loss and mutual support, of physical and symbolic coping and making sense, of turning experience into knowledge, of constantly changing and adapting, of seeing life as victory, of shared responsibility and accountability. It becomes the new abnormal.

What does the acceptance of the war – this war of Russia against Ukraine but also against the world – as a ‘new abnormal’ change for Ukraine and indeed all of Europe?

It certainly influences agenda-setting at both national and international European levels. Apparently, it is no longer possible to have war fatigue; similarly, coming back to Styazhkina, one cannot be tired of climate change. Whether we like it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, this war will continue affecting our lives and the lives of future generations. When it stops being an exception and becomes a daily reality, not a desired or a good thing, but a planning horizon, war brings different meaning to such notions as peace, security, stability and militarization. And it raises a set of uncomfortable but pressing questions: How can we strive for peace while preparing for war on an international European level? How to build a pan-European security architecture that includes Ukraine or even has it as its cornerstone? How to develop and support an active and inclusive army while countering patriarchal and authoritarian encroachments? How to bring national and international security concerns to each and every citizen instead of leaving the responsibility to only a few? And maybe last, but definitely not least, how to deal with war that inevitably affects climate change?

For Ukraine, the war as a new abnormal and agenda-setting horizon also means that its society needs to reimagine itself in new terms, with a different language. In a recent conversation, several colleagues and I shared an unexpectedly similar and alarming observation: perceptions and reflections on the war and its social and political effects seem stuck in 2023, when the first shock of the invasion had passed, and a belief in a quick counteroffensive was still possible.

Voices calling for the normalization of the war are also calling for an arrival in 2026, where the war is no longer an aberration but a strategic challenge that requires careful, adaptive and flexible long-term planning. Alongside accepting the durational presence of the war, the move from 2023 to 2026 also entails a redefinition of the public good and the social contract.

In the first months and years after the full-scale invasion, cancelling, postponing, or silencing everything not connected to defence in the most direct and immediate way was the only possible survival mode. Four full years into the big war, these approaches are not helpful. Bogdan Logvynenko, a journalist, writer and, for several months, a member of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, recently compared this inertia to a tourniquet: when applied correctly for a short time, it stops bleeding and saves lives; when left for longer than necessary, it becomes deadly.

Over the years, relations between silence and security have changed significantly, as have relations between society and various legislative and governmental bodies, or what in Ukraine is called ‘the state.’ While it is crucial to keep in mind that the war inevitably sets priorities and limits certain rights and freedoms, now, no less important is to review these new rules and limitations, to check them against reality, and to insist on transparency and accountability. A more open public discussion about the evaluation of actual needs and the temporary character of certain limitations is long overdue.

Meanwhile, the war as a new normality demands a wider acceptance of responsibility. The lives of the few cannot protect the lives of the many. Artur Dron’, a young writer who voluntarily joined the Armed Forces in 2022, bitterly writes in his last book Hemingway Knows Nothing, ‘If these years of service had been divided between two or three people, everyone could have stayed alive, everyone could have spent time with their families, and everyone could have protected their loved ones.’2

For both Ukraine and the rest of Europe, the war as a new abnormal implies a different role for the army and a more complex, entangled relationship between the army and society. Here, the army is not just the institution with the highest level of trust: in Ukraine, according to polls in December 2025, 92% of people trust the Armed Forces. It needs to become an institution with the fairest, most transparent, and most supportive set of rules and procedures, an institution focused on people who protect people. When an entire society shares the responsibility of protecting and supporting itself and others, the army is not the scary ‘other’ but an indivisible part of ‘us’, of social service and the new social contract to protect peace.

However, perhaps the most important challenge of normalizing the war, of living with it, and of bringing it, with all its ghosts and shadows, into the future (that is created by what has become of us), is to always remember who waged it. No discussions or criticism of the steps and methods, decisions and solutions that this war brings can possibly happen without clearly naming its causes, reasons and, ultimately, the perpetrator. Normalizing the war means to learn its lessons, where everything and anything is possible, even if unlikely.

Ukraine did not choose this war either twelve or four years ago. It has to fight it and accept the new abnormal to prevent it from becoming a global norm and setting the international agenda. If there is a possible meaningful question about the end of this war, it is not when but how – on Ukrainian terms, with shared ghosts and responsibilities.