Ten Theses on the Future: Serhiy Zhadan’s Speech at the Munich Security Conference
“Death from hypothermia in one’s own bed in a city of over a million people in Eastern Europe should not be part of a person’s life plans,” Serhiy Zhadan said from the podium of the Munich Security Conference.
It has been held annually since 1963. This year, the Founder’s Award of the Munich Security Conference, named after Ewald von Kleist, will be awarded to the Ukrainian people. “This year, we will present our annual award not to an individual outstanding personality, but to the courageous Ukrainian people,” said Wolfgang Ischinger on February 9, 2026.
Serhiy Zhadan’s speech took place February 12. The address was dedicated to the future, which in Ukraine is defined by the wartime present. “…While we are here with you talking about the future, the war continues. Many things in relations between the states (and, most importantly, between the peoples) will not be restored automatically after a conditional (or unconditional) ceasefire. The sense of openness will not be restored; the sense of trust will not be restored. The authority of many institutions and leaders, initiatives and projects will not be restored,”—this is one of the ten theses from Zhadan’s report. Radio Khartiya publishes the speech he delivered.
What Can Be Seen in This Darkness. Ten Theses on the Future
Thesis One
Let’s start with this. There are ten apartments in my building in Kharkiv. There used to be a music school on the first floor, but it closed at the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion. No one lives on the second floor—the elderly lady from one apartment died before the war began, and the family from the other left immediately after it started. On the third floor lives an elderly man who, ten years ago, still had quite an impressive appearance. He lives alone. He goes to the shop less and less often—it’s hard for him to climb the stairs. Next to him lives a family that’s responsible for taking care of the building and has a key to the attic. On the fourth floor, there’s another empty apartment—the family seems to have left the country. An entrepreneur lives next door—a quiet and lonely man. He sent his family abroad. On the fifth floor, one apartment is empty—the residents left at the beginning of the war; in the other lives a family—they didn’t go anywhere, and they stay at home during the bombardments. On the sixth floor, one apartments is a rental property, but the owners have left town; I live in the other apartment.
Usually, we have electricity, water, and heating. In the past few months, each time our neighborhood is shelled, the building falls silent. The electricity goes out, and so does the water. Within a few hours, the building cools down, like an animal killed by a truck and left beside the highway. The building’s few remaining residents freeze along with it. Then everything is repaired, and the building comes back to life. This winter, everyone is cold. They are destroying our cities. They want our cities dead. Sometimes I think that if the building is forgotten and the electricity is not turned back on, it will simply freeze. Along with its residents. It will freeze quite quickly. Say, in a day or two. And now, let us talk about the future.
Thesis Two
The most uncertain thing is to speak about the future when the present does not provide a sense of balance. War implies, above all, a fractured sense of time; you are simply trying to hold on to the moment you are in, not fully relying on tomorrow. An air raid warning is simply a reminder that all your plans can be adjusted, changed by someone else—someone who has absolutely no concern for your expectations. Under the conditions of a total war, a war of annihilation, if you rely too much on the future, you become vulnerable and nonfunctional, because the future can betray you at any moment. On the other hand, if your consciousness is dictated by the need to survive, the need to stay alive, your chances improve. In either case, there is not much room left for visionary thinking.
Since the beginning of the full-scale war, for many of us Ukrainians, the continuity of time has been broken, its linearity and order disrupted. Life in wartime is life without guarantees. And yet, even in these darkest of times, we need to talk about what might happen to us tomorrow. Simply to be prepared for the worst. And not be surprised if things change for the better.
Thesis Three
How can you talk about your future when its shape is being decided by negotiations? How can you relate your own vision of the future, your own desire for a future, to the rhetoric of an occupier, who above all wishes for your capitulation? We have an idea of how we would like to see the world around us when we wake up. Yet we fully understand that not all our expectations are achievable. Justice is not an inherent part of our reality. But our need for justice is natural and indestructible. It is precisely this, in my view, that allows many of us today to have lost all of our illusions, but not our sense of dignity. For what is dignity? Not having to justify the need and desire to be yourself. Not giving up on yourself. Not being afraid to be yourself.
When the darkness is at its deepest, speaking of light is the worst thing you can do. Because the temptation to believe that the presence of darkness is not temporary, that it must remain with us forever, is so great. Yet we must remember a simple truth—the future of the darkness is not obvious either. It also depends on countless factors. And one of these factors is our willingness to endure that darkness.
Thesis Four
So let’s try to talk about the future. What can we say about it with certainty? We know for sure where we will be entering it from. We will enter it from our deep darkness, the darkness of the present. From black gloom. And this blackness, this gloom, will remain behind our backs as part of our memory and our experience. And as one of the components of the future we are talking about here. For it is obvious that any future, even the most radiant one, will be marked by the signs of this gloom, by its presence in our experience. We must be prepared for this. Ultimately, it is unusual for a war to really come to an end. It is very important to understand that we will have to deal with its shadows and ghosts for a very long time. This will take work. In the future, it will demand a great deal of effort. In the future it will require a great deal of work with our memory. Today, it requires today a great deal of work with our imaginations. When imagining the future, one wants to imagine it as ideal. Yet history shows that what is ideal for us is usually our past. It is the past we tend to idealize. And what, then, about the future? In our case, that means the post-war future.
Thesis Five
The future will certainly not resemble the past. There is a certain trap in this. Some of us—both those inside Ukraine and those who sympathize with us from outside—consciously or subconsciously speak about the future in terms of the past. This is a grave mistake. What has been will no longer be. It will be different. This does not at all mean that the future cannot be good. It can be good. It can be happy. It simply ought not to be compared to what was. Our past has been irreversibly and categorically destroyed by this war. It has already been destroyed and, I remind you, goes on being destroyed, because while we are here talking about the future, the war is ongoing. When it comes to relations between states (and, most importantly, between peoples), many things will not be restored automatically after a conditional (or unconditional) ceasefire. The sense of openness will not be restored; the sense of trust will not be restored. The authority of many institutions and leaders, initiatives and projects will not be restored. Most importantly—the sense of security will not be restored. It will be different. And it is being formed right now, in these days, in these months.
Where am I going with this? The strategy of waiting out the present as a forced pause is wrong; the notion of the future as an opportunity to simply return everything to how it was is wrong. A future as a deferred version of the past is an illusion. The future will consist of us—as we are, as we will remain, as we may yet become.
Thesis Six
From time to time, one hears the opinion that all wars eventually come to an end. The war that Russia has unleashed against Ukraine will end as well. This thesis, despite its obviousness, is not without danger. For several generations of Europeans, the Hundred Years’ War never truly ended. They simply did not live to see its conclusion, perishing (or simply passing away from natural causes) right in the middle of that war. To perceive the end of any war as an inevitable fact is ethically questionable. The end of a war requires great effort and great work. It also requires great faith and great patience. Talking about the future in this context is not a desire to disengage oneself from reality, but rather, on the contrary, an objective perception of reality itself. The future is a door that opens from this side of the room—the room in which we all find ourselves.
Thesis Seven
Why is it still important for us to speak about the future today? Because in the future, the level of misunderstanding between us will only increase. There will be too great a gap in experience, too different a past that we leave behind, and, consequently—too much divergence in our expectations for the future. For it is obvious that the level of attention the world is giving Ukraine today will also change. How capable will the world be of maintaining empathy for a country that, at some point, will stop being bombed? What will replace that empathy? Healthy rationality? Ordinary emotional fatigue from injustice that does not directly affect you?
Currently, we are trying to make the world hear us, hoping that the world will listen, understand, and support us. But how long can one maintain attention on oneself and one’s suffering by shouting? And how concrete will our claims for attention and understanding be after the extent of the threat we face changes? Will the world want to speak with us once they stop killing us en masse? Does the world have the moral right to get tired of us? And how, in that case, are we to exist in our shared future—with a weary world, with a need for justice, with a total sense of distrust?
Thesis Eight
It seems to me very important to speak of our future precisely as a shared future. This is not about political or military alliances, about membership in associations or blocs. It is already obvious that every major war reminds us of the impossibility of distancing ourselves from one another in today’s world, of the ineffectiveness (and even immorality) of dividing the world into spheres of influence and areas of interest. This war—the first major war of the 21st century—has shown that the world is too defined by its past not to build the future using shared concepts of security and trust. And that helping those who have become victims of armed aggression today is not doing them a favor; it is building a shared space of normalcy and interaction for tomorrow. As much as some may wish otherwise, a fire on a ship concerns all its passengers, regardless of the class of ticket they hold. Perhaps this is why we are speaking here today about the future, despite the fact that, I suppose, each of us has our own plans for the coming weekend and the next year.
Thesis Nine
And, in fact, what are our plans for the coming year? For example, my neighbors’ immediate plans are to survive the winter, to make it to spring, not to freeze in their own apartments. In these weeks, as the country faces an immense trial of cold and darkness, the vulnerability of human beings in the modern world suddenly became unbearably obvious—with their dependence on infrastructure, on public services, on the temperature outside their window, and on inner peace of mind. Human beings are not born for missile strikes, for hours-long air raid warning, for tracking the routes of attack drones that are coming to kill them. To be killed in one’s own home, in the building where one was born, grew up, and has lived all one’s life. dying of hypothermia in one’s own bed, in a city of over a million, in Eastern Europe, should not be part of any person’s life plans.
Thesis Ten
What, then, can be part of our plans? Not to lose the contours of reality, the contours of the present. Precisely those contours on which our future will be built. Our shared future. Darkness, despite all its immensity and hopelessness, is finite. It truly can be endured. The main thing is not to be a passive, indifferent observer in this night, this time when it is important and effective for each of us to resist this darkness. To resist with our words. To resist with our work. To resist with our readiness to remain here in the future.
The greatest danger of darkness is our inability to see things as they are. When this gloom lifts, we will be surprised at how many of us were here, how much we managed to do, and, most importantly, how beautiful this world can be, if only we add a little common sense and justice to it.
translated by Mykyta Tsyhanok
edited by Isaac Wheeler
