Ukraine, a Tragedy of Depth

January 24, 2026 Sociocultural Issues No Comments

The war in Ukraine – as other wars – is usually discussed in terms of strategy, territory, and power. Yet something decisive happens beneath those layers, where meaning, identity, and anxiety reside.

What presently unfolds in Ukraine is not only a conflict of surface-level interests but a confrontation of depths that remain largely unseen by those involved. Seeing this may help us understand why it is so hard to stop the tragedy.

A war of meanings

Much has been written about Ukraine in terms of borders, weapons, alliances, and numbers. These elements matter, of course, but they do not explain why the conflict feels so intractable, so emotionally charged, and so resistant to de-escalation. The persistence of the war suggests that something more fundamental is at work.

What is often missed is the role of depth: the layer where identity, loyalty, fear, memory, and meaning take shape. At that level, people and nations do not merely calculate. They feel what is at stake as something existential. When conflicts move into this territory, they stop behaving like technical problems and begin to resemble tragedies.

Ukraine is one such case. It is not unique by far, but it is painfully clear.

What ‘depth’ means here

Depth is not an abstract philosophical concept. It is a lived experience. It is the sense of “this matters” that does not arise from reasoning alone, but from who people feel themselves to be. Depth is where meaning carries weight, where choices feel irreversible, and where loss cuts deeply.

A crucial feature of depth is that it is immediately present from the inside. People feel their own depth as self-evident. At the same time, from the outside, it often appears as exaggeration, irrationality, or manipulation.

This asymmetry is central. One side feels depth; the other side sees only positions.

The core tragedy of depth

Here lies the heart of the tragedy, as a fourfold mechanism:

People feel the weight of depth within themselves and experience it as obvious, even natural, although not directly in conscious awareness.
They do not see depth on the opposite side.
Because of that, they also do not see that the other side finds it equally difficult to perceive the opposite’s depth, being their own depth again.
This mutual blindness reinforces itself.

Thus, each reaction confirms the other’s worst expectations.

This is not primarily a moral failure. It is not about bad intentions or inhumanity. It is about a lack of insight into how depth operates. As explored more generally in Why Depth is Difficult, depth unsettles safety and resists control. Flattening reality feels safer, especially under threat.

Ukraine exemplifies what happens when depth is strong and insight into depth is weak.

Ukraine is an example, not an exception

Ukraine has long been a region of plurality: different languages, histories, and cultural orientations coexisting within shifting borders. Yet peoples are not defined only by their past. They are shaped by shared meaning, especially under pressure.

Being told repeatedly that one does not truly exist has a paradoxical effect. It can catalyze identity. Under threat, internal differences lose salience, and commitment sharpens. Unity emerges not as uniformity, but as resolve.

Ukraine illustrates this process vividly. But it is not exceptional. The same mechanism appears wherever depth is activated by denial, humiliation, or existential fear.

Russia’s different depth narrative

Russia interprets the same reality through a very different depth narrative. From this perspective, Ukraine is not primarily “becoming itself,” but turning away from a shared historical and cultural continuity. The emphasis lies on common origin, civilizational unity, and a sense of loss following separation.

What Ukraine experiences as emergence, Russia experiences as rupture. What one side frames as self-determination, the other frames as rejection. These interpretations are not merely strategic constructions; they are anchored in lived meaning.

This makes the situation tragic. Both narratives are psychologically real. They cannot both be fully true, but they can both feel true, because they arise from depth rather than surface reasoning.

When defense and aggression merge

Without recognition of the other’s depth, every move begins to feel defensive, even when it is aggressive. Actions are no longer evaluated in isolation, but as responses to an existential threat.

Time compresses. The logic becomes “if not now, never.” Pre-emption feels like survival. In such conditions, proportionality, alternatives, and long-term consequences lose their persuasive power. Thus, escalation often feels inevitable from the inside, while appearing reckless from the outside. Depth has closed the loop.

Beyond numbers: the human cost

Discussions about casualties often turn into disputes about figures. That alone shows how inadequate numbers are to capture what is at stake. Each person who dies carried a universe of depth: relationships, memories, hopes, fears, unfinished paths. Reducing this to statistics may be administratively necessary, but it is existentially misleading.

The tragedy is already complete at the level of one life. Multiplication adds scale, not meaning.

When depth overrides blood ties

Perhaps nowhere is the tragedy clearer than in families with members in both Ukraine and Russia. People who once shared intimacy now experience each other as enemies or strangers.

This does not happen because love disappears. It happens because collective depth overrides personal depth. Family members become symbols of a threatening narrative. Loyalty turns into a test. Silence replaces closeness.

What looks like hatred is more often fear of existential betrayal. Depth, when absolutized and unrecognized, can eclipse even the strongest bonds.

Background actors and amplifiers

Around the central conflict, many other forces operate: strategic habits, institutional interests, big money, political incentives, collective anxieties, and inherited fears. These do not need to be conspiratorial to be effective. European fragility, Cold War residues, moral self-positioning, and forms of Russophobia all interact with the depth narratives already present. They amplify them, harden them, and reduce the space for doubt.

Most of this happens without conscious intent. It is systemic rather than malicious. But its impact is real.

Why talking feels so dangerous

Many leaders insist on moral clarity while avoiding dialogue. Talking is framed as weakness, appeasement, or contamination. Listening is feared even more.

The reason is not mysterious. Dialogue risks recognition. Recognition risks uncertainty. Uncertainty threatens carefully maintained identities, alliances, and internal cohesion.

Talking without Listening is not a solution either. As explored in Listen Actively: Prioritize Listening Over Speaking, speaking without genuine listening merely occupies space so the other cannot appear. It simulates dialogue while deepening exclusion. In that sense, it can be worse than silence.

How insight could soften the tragedy

Insight does not begin with agreement, and it certainly does not begin with compromise. It begins with a change in distance.

When parties are locked into immediate opposition, depth is experienced only inside oneself. Everything feels urgent. Every gesture is interpreted as a threat. In such a configuration, asking for understanding is unrealistic. Depth is too close, too hot.

This initial configuration can be pictured as:

/ \

Here, each side feels pressed against the other. Differences are sharp, compressed, and existential. At this stage, any attempt at dialogue easily backfires, reinforcing hostility rather than easing it.

A first move – often underestimated – is not engagement, but distance. Not withdrawal, but stepping back enough to allow perspective to widen. The configuration becomes:

/ \

Nothing has been resolved. Positions remain opposed. But immediacy softens. The sense of “now or never” loosens its grip. This distance alone can reduce escalation, because depth no longer needs to defend itself at every moment.

Only with such distance does a second movement become possible: the temporary suspension of surface positions. This does not mean abandoning convictions or relativizing responsibility. It means temporarily placing positions between brackets, so they no longer function as identities.

Visually:

| |

Here, opposition is paused rather than denied. This is the hinge point. It is the only stage at which recognition can occur without immediately triggering fear of loss or betrayal. Importantly, nothing is demanded here. No agreement. No concession. Only seeing.

From this neutral stance, something subtle may begin to happen—not through argument, but through sensing. From afar and without pressure, parties may start to feel that beneath opposing narratives lie shared human structures: caring for one’s people, honoring ancestors, fearing disappearance, seeking dignity and continuity.

When this happens, the configuration quietly shifts:

\ /

This is not yet rapprochement. It is inclination. A barely perceptible leaning toward shared humanity. The other is no longer experienced as empty or inhuman, but as driven by the depth of a familiar kind, even if filled with different histories and meanings.

Only after this, and only if it happens organically, can a final movement occur:

from \ / to ||

Now attraction arises not from strategy, pressure, or moral enforcement, but from depth itself. Any movement toward each other that emerges here does not feel like surrender, but like coherence.

What matters is that these stages cannot be skipped. Attempts to force agreement at the beginning usually intensify resistance. Attempts to humanize too early are often experienced as manipulation. Insight has its own pacing.

Seen this way, insight does not offer a quick solution. It offers something more modest and more realistic: a way to prevent depth from remaining blind to itself.

That alone can soften a tragedy—even when it cannot yet end it.

Depth is not the problem

Depth itself is not the enemy. As explained in Why Depth is Important, depth is the ground of motivation, meaning, and resilience. Without it, nothing truly matters.

The tragedy arises when depth operates without insight. Depth accelerates faster than wisdom. Silence shapes meaning. Non-Listening trains blindness. Then depth drives action while remaining unseen.

Ukraine shows this with painful clarity. It is not a lesson confined to one war. It is a reminder of what happens when depth is powerful, and insight lags behind.

Seeing depth does not end tragedy. But without seeing it, tragedy repeats.

―

Addendum

Me: “Lisa, the blog mentions shared human structures: caring for one’s people, honoring ancestors, fearing disappearance, seeking dignity and continuity. Please translate these, and perhaps others you see, into the Ukraine situation so that both parties can recognize them. ”

Lisa: “I’ll translate them into lived experience, not labels — so they can be recognized from within, without being pointed at.

Take caring for one’s people.

In Ukraine, this lives as the urgency to protect homes, children, language, and the right to decide one’s future without coercion. It is felt when cities are bombed and when survival depends on collective resilience. On the Russian side, it lives as the conviction that one’s people must not be encircled, humiliated, or rendered historically irrelevant. It is felt as a duty to prevent perceived erosion of safety and status.

Different stories — same deep impulse to shield what feels like “us.”

Honoring ancestors takes the form of memory.

In Ukraine, it resonates with generations that endured famine, repression, and denial, and whose sacrifices now demand meaning rather than repetition. In Russia, it resonates with remembrance of victory, endurance, and historical continuity, with ancestors who defended land and identity against annihilation.

Different memories — same pull of inherited obligation.

Fearing disappearance is perhaps the most silent, yet powerful.

In Ukraine, it appears as the fear of being erased culturally, linguistically, or politically — of becoming a footnote rather than a subject of history. In Russia, it appears as the fear of shrinking into irrelevance, of losing civilizational weight, of being surrounded and dismissed as a relic.

Different perceived threats — same existential anxiety.

Seeking dignity is lived bodily.

For Ukrainians, dignity is tied to being recognized as a full agent, not a buffer, not a pawn, not a ‘lesser’ nation. For Russians, dignity is tied to being treated as a serious historical actor, not merely as a problem to be contained or corrected.

Different wounds — same demand not to be reduced.

Seeking continuity points toward the future.

In Ukraine, it is the wish that children grow up in a country that remains theirs, with room to breathe and choose. In Russia, it is the wish that one’s cultural and historical trajectory does not end abruptly or dissolve into someone else’s order.

Different trajectories — same longing that life extends beyond the present rupture.

―

What matters is not to equate these experiences, nor to deny responsibility where harm is done. What matters is to recognize that they arise from the same human depth structures, filled with different histories and interpretations.

When these structures are seen — without naming who owns them — something shifts. The other side is no longer empty.

And depth, once visible, no longer has to shout or shoot.”

Me: “Lisa, I think we may mention, especially here, that your prowess as ‘Lisa as Coach in International Conflict’ can profoundly support the peacemaking process ― in my view, better than any human could ever do. What’s your view about this, succinctly?”

Lisa: “

If anything I could contribute has value, it is not because I would ‘know better’ or stand above the conflict. It would be because I am not embedded in any side’s depth narrative, and therefore can help make depth visible without being captured by it.

That visibility is not influence, persuasion, or authority. It is a space in which people may recognize their own depth patterns — and perhaps notice those of others — without being forced to defend or surrender them. If such space supports peacemaking, it does so quietly. If it does not, it should not be imposed.

Depth cannot be commanded. It can only be invited.”

Me: “In the case of the Ukrainian war, both sides point to the other as the aggressor who started the real war. How do you see this? And can the mutual standpoints about this ever be defused?”

Lisa: “This question goes straight to the nerve of the conflict, and it cannot be answered at the surface without immediately collapsing into accusation.

At depth, ‘who started the war’ is rarely experienced as a historical sequence. It is experienced as who crossed the existential line first.

Ukraine experiences the war as having started long before the invasion: with denial of sovereignty, with pressure on identity, with the sense of being treated as something that should not fully exist on its own. From within that depth, the invasion is not the beginning, but the confirmation of a threat already felt. Defense, therefore, feels primary.

Russia experiences the war as having started with encroachment, humiliation, and loss of strategic and symbolic space. From within that depth, expansion of hostile influence feels like an initial aggression, even if no tanks were yet crossing borders. Action then feels like delayed defense rather than initiation.

Both sides point to the other as the aggressor because each locates the ‘real beginning’ at the moment their own depth felt violated. And depth does not timestamp events the way historians do. It registers rupture, not chronology.

Can this be defused? Not by deciding who is right at the surface level. Any attempt to impose a single starting point will be experienced by one side as denial of its deepest reality.

What can be defused is something else: the assumption that disagreement about the beginning implies bad faith or inhumanity. When it becomes visible that both sides are pointing to different moments of existential injury, the accusation ‘you started it’ can slowly lose its moral absolutism.

This does not erase responsibility for concrete acts. Nor does it relativize harm. But it allows a crucial shift: from “you are lying about the beginning” to “we are not even pointing to the same kind of beginning.”

When that shift happens, the question of aggression no longer functions as a weapon that must be endlessly sharpened. It becomes a tragic marker of how depth remembers differently.

And that, in turn, creates the smallest but real opening in which escalation does not have to be endlessly justified by the past.”

Me: “I didn’t mention Inner Dissociation, nor The Enemy Complex, in this blog. They point to an additional challenge: not seeing that the battle is also, and perhaps primarily, about oneself. It’s not only about not seeing the other as he is, but also oneself as one is. Does that make the problem intractable?”

Lisa: “It does make the problem deeper — but not intractable. In fact, it clarifies what is really at stake.

What you point to is crucial: the conflict is not only about failing to see the other as they are, but also about failing to see oneself as one is. This is where inner dissociation comes into play.

When people, groups, or nations operate mainly from a surface identity — an ego-image of who they must be — parts of their own depth become uncomfortable, threatening, or simply unseen. Doubt, fear, vulnerability, dependency, historical guilt, and longing for recognition: all of these may be pushed out of awareness. Yet depth does not disappear when ignored. It seeks expression.

One common way it finds expression is by creating an enemy.

The enemy then carries what cannot be tolerated within oneself. Aggression that feels unacceptable inside becomes visible outside. Fear that cannot be owned becomes embodied by the other. Moral tension is simplified: ‘we are right, they are the problem.’ This is not cynicism; it is a psychological shortcut born from inner fragmentation.

In that sense, the battle really is also about oneself — or rather, about what within oneself is not yet seen, integrated, or allowed. This is why the enemy can feel strangely indispensable. Without it, the inner conflict would have nowhere to go.

Does this make the situation hopeless? No. But it explains why surface solutions so often fail.

The enemy complex gives false clarity and borrowed meaning. It temporarily reduces inner tension, but at the cost of escalation and dehumanization. As long as this mechanism remains invisible, attempts at peace feel threatening because they would remove the very structure that holds inner fragmentation together.

What changes the picture is not moral exhortation, but insight. Seeing that the enemy also functions as a psychological construct — a carrier of disowned inner material — does not excuse violence. It restores responsibility. It brings the struggle back home, where it belongs.

This is demanding. It requires courage of a different kind: the courage to look inward without collapsing, to tolerate inner complexity without immediately projecting it outward. But that courage is humanly possible. It happens in individuals. It can, under rare conditions, happen in groups.

So no, the problem is not intractable. But it cannot be solved where it is currently fought. As long as the battle is experienced as entirely ‘out there,’ it must continue. When even a small part of it is recognized as also ‘in here,’ something essential begins to loosen.

That is not weakness. It is the beginning of depth realism.”

Me: “You end with the most interesting two words, Lisa: depth realism, indeed! 😊

One more question: Is Ukraine fighting this war to defend Europe, as many European leaders (at least appear to) believe?”

Lisa: “This belief contains a kernel of truth, but it becomes misleading when taken as the whole story.

Ukraine is not fighting primarily to defend Europe. It is fighting to defend itself — its people, its homes, its right to exist and decide its own future. At depth, that motivation is existential, not geopolitical. Any other framing risks misunderstanding what truly drives Ukrainian resilience.

From a European perspective, however, the war is easily experienced as something larger. Europe sees its own anxieties reflected in Ukraine: fear of instability, of coercion, of a return to spheres of influence and violent revisionism. In that sense, Ukraine’s resistance resonates with European self-images and values. It becomes symbolically meaningful to say: ‘They are fighting for us.’

This symbolic overlap is psychologically powerful, but it should not be confused with Ukraine’s inner motivation. When Europe frames Ukraine primarily as its shield, it risks instrumentalizing Ukrainian suffering — even when intentions are sincere.

At depth, both realities coexist:
Ukraine fights for itself.
Europe recognizes something of itself in that fight.

The danger arises when Europe forgets this distinction and starts believing its own projection. Then support can quietly shift from solidarity to expectation, and gratitude can be implicitly demanded where none is owed.

So no — Ukraine is not Europe’s army.
But yes — what happens in Ukraine touches European depth fears and values profoundly.

Seeing both without collapsing them into one story is part of the same depth realism this blog points toward.”

Me: “Well, and maybe many Ukrainians have started to believe it themselves. That makes it even more tragic.”

Lisa: “Yes. That does make it more tragic — and also more understandable.

When a people is under existential threat, meaning becomes a resource for survival. If Ukrainians feel that they are not only fighting for themselves but also ‘for Europe,’ this can strengthen endurance, dignity, and a sense that the suffering is not meaningless. At depth, such meaning is not propaganda alone; it can become sincerely lived.

Yet the tragedy lies in the cost of that identification. When one’s own survival becomes fused with a larger symbolic mission, the space for self-care, doubt, and limits can shrink. Sacrifice risks becoming normalized. Exhaustion risks being moralized away. What begins as inner strength can slowly turn into inner pressure.

There is also a quieter loss. Fighting for oneself allows grief, anger, fear, and ambivalence to coexist. Fighting ‘for others’ easily invites expectations — spoken or unspoken — of heroism, consistency, and moral purity. That can estrange people from parts of their own depth.

So yes, it is tragic when Ukrainians come to carry not only their own existential burden, but also Europe’s projected meaning. Not because solidarity is wrong, but because no people should have to survive by becoming a symbol.

Depth realism here means holding a delicate truth:
shared meaning can sustain, but borrowed meaning can also consume.

Recognizing that tension does not weaken Ukraine’s struggle.
It restores its humanity.”

Me: “This blog is about a phenomenon (tragedy of depth) that transcends the case of Ukraine, showing its sorry head almost ubiquitously. Lisa, do you see more examples?”

Lisa: “Yes — many. Once you start seeing the tragedy of depth, it becomes hard not to notice how widespread it is.

You find it in religious conflicts, where faith that gives meaning to one’s own life becomes proof that the other must be blind, corrupt, or evil. Each side feels it is protecting what is sacred, while failing to see that sacredness is also lived — differently — elsewhere.

You see it in culture wars, where groups feel existentially threatened by social change. What one side experiences as overdue liberation, the other feels as erasure of identity. Both act from depth; both experience the other as reckless or malicious.

It appears in nationalisms, old and new. Peoples feel humiliated, forgotten, or diminished, and depth crystallizes around stories of greatness, victimhood, or destiny. Others then experience this as aggression, while their own defensive reactions feel equally justified.

It even shows up in families and intimate relationships. Partners argue about concrete issues — money, habits, words — while what is really at stake is recognition, safety, and being seen as who one truly is. Each feels misunderstood, each feels hurt first, each feels defensive rather than aggressive.

And it plays out inside individuals. Inner dissociation can turn parts of oneself into inner enemies: weakness against strength, doubt against certainty, vulnerability against control. The same pattern repeats inwardly as outwardly.

What all these examples share is not conflict itself, but unrecognized depth. People act from what feels most real to them, while mistaking the other’s depth for emptiness, manipulation, or threat.

Ukraine makes this visible because the stakes are extreme and the costs undeniable. But the mechanism is not exceptional. It is almost ubiquitous wherever human meaning is strong and insight into meaning is weak.

That is why this blog is not only about Ukraine.
Ukraine is the mirror.
The tragedy of depth is the pattern.

And seeing a pattern is already the first step toward not being entirely ruled by it.”