How has Ukrainian consciousness changed during 2025? How are new technologies changing our reality and how are old concepts dissolving? What is cognitive warfare and cognitive advantage? Why are we less interested in “what’s going on in Russia” and are our gazes finally directed inward? And how is our identity transforming?
The year 2025 has become a Rubicon in so many ways, both for me personally and for the world. It has completely changed our perception of reality and plunged humanity further into the total uncertainty that characterizes the painful destabilizing upheavals of another phase transition that thinkers in all parts of the world are talking about.
USA, new technologies and reality
A phase transition, or transition to a new technological order, is a leap-like transformation of technologies that makes everything different. That is, it does not make processes “faster, higher, stronger.” It changes their direction and cause-and-effect relationships. The development of artificial intelligence, the scaling of computing power, changes in financial instruments, the destruction and creation of production and trade chains — all this changes our style of perception of reality.
Because technological changes require changes in relationships between people and in the principles of managing human potential. And therefore, the phase transition already now requires radical changes in how we plan the development of our society. We can say that the changes that took place in the USA in 2025 influenced us the most. The paradigm shift that the new White House administration brought with it directly affected many in Ukraine, as many people were simply left without a salary and work due to the actual withdrawal of USAID from Ukraine. The reduction of many projects to topics traditional for the information space became a trigger for opening new discussions and finding new approaches.
A look inside yourself
In the expert community, there has been a sharp increase in the level of discussion about the elements of cognitive security and cognitive warfare . In the political dimension there was a discussion around the “unity of Ukrainians”, the creation of the Ministry of Unity, the unnatural pumping of it with blurred powers in the field of strategic communications, and later its inglorious liquidation. These events finally opened up space for work on the implementation of the Law of Ukraine “On the Basic Principles of State Policy in the Sphere of Establishing Ukrainian National and Civic Identity” , adopted on December 13, 2022.
Exactly three years after the adoption of this law, the Office of the President of Ukraine and people close to it began to systematically promote the process of institutionalizing work in the field of identity, using for this purpose the existing administrative infrastructure of the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Ukraine, as well as the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine as a tool for investing public funds in the creation of content that will serve as a means of affirming Ukrainian identity both within the country and abroad.
Of course, it would be more appropriate for all processes related to identity to take place in one administrative institution – as was planned in 2019, when the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports of Ukraine was created. However, the function of “counteracting” and “fighting” instead of “creating” and “spreading” instilled by donor money nullified this correct initiative.
Under the influence of public opinion and the wishes of the president, Volodymyr Borodyanskyi then the Minister of culture, youth and sports, began writing a draft law on disinformation, which was predictably unsuccessful. Later, for the sake of political balance, sports and youth were returned to the old Soviet management contour in the separate ministry.
However, such a paradigm shift is of epochal importance for us, despite all the “yellow media” publications about the “1000 Hours of Content Pitching Festival” and the birth of Deputy Prime Minister Tetyana Berezhnaya, on which we sincerely congratulate her and wish her good health.
The discussion about our identity and the stories we want to tell each other and the rest of the world is a long-awaited return of the focus of attention to ourselves and within ourselves. It is primarily about our own capabilities and our own vision of reality. In contrast to the ten-year dominance of the external focus of attention – concentration on hostile fakes and narratives, which we, due to the need to report to donors, had to constantly study, digest and spread further among the Ukrainian audience.
No matter how much budget money is spent on 1,000 hours of content, this content will most likely not be about Russian fakes and narratives, panel discussions about which are already firmly in our hearts, but about who we are and who we want to be.
Changing mindsets and “civilization’s shadow”
The paradigm shift has also occurred in a key battleground with the Russians – in the area of reflexive management. For the past five years, I have been intensively studying and teaching certain elements of reflective control, which is a methodology for one’s own thinking and influencing the thinking of others. This methodology has been formed since the 1950s by Soviet scientist Georgiy Shchedrovitsky and his entourage, who introduced the term “systemic-thought-oriented methodology,” essentially the science of thinking, cognitive processes, and their management.
Today, the key representatives of this environment are the top politicians of our enemy, the Russian Federation: the head of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation Anton Vaino, the first deputy head of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation Sergei Kiriyenko. In addition to them, this discussion is filled with Kiriyenko’s subordinate Alexander Kharichev, the Kremlin’s court propagandist of nuclear holocaust Sergei Karaganov, Sergei Pereslyegin, Alexander Dugin, and others.
Only in 2025, at least four strategic documents were published about who Russians are and what Russian civilization is. One of Sergey Kiriyenko’s flagship political projects, “social architects,” built entirely on Shchedrovych’s practices of managing society, has entered an active phase of implementation.
All these practices did not work on Ukrainians for one simple reason – we are not one people, never were and never will be. However, our key problem was and remains only one: we know that “Ukraine is not Russia,” as Leonid Danylovych Kuchma told us long ago. We know that we are not them. But it is still difficult for us to describe who we are and what Ukraine is, except that it is not Russia.
I consider the author’s documentary project by journalist Myroslava Barchuk and producer Volodymyr Ladyzhets “The Last War” and the film of this project “The Ukrainian Curse: Builders and Destroyers of the Empire” to be a central phenomenon in this paradigm shift regarding our internal reflection .
The film raises one of the key issues for me – the responsibility of Ukrainians for the European space that lies between the left bank of the Dnieper and the Ural Mountains. The realization that we created the empire that is now killing us. The question of the “shadow of civilization”… About our “shadow.”
The latest trend of this self-reflection has been picked up by Maria Berlinska, a well-known volunteer and founder of the Dignitas charity foundation. In her editorial and interview with Natalia Moseychuk, she emphasizes that the cognitive battlefield is becoming key. War is rising to another level of complexity, for which we are still not ready. Maria’s key message is that we “must work with Russia from an adult’s perspective,” because we are the only adult left on this continent.
Cognitive superiority
The topic of cognitive warfare and cognitive security is currently being discussed extremely intensively within NATO. Since the summer of this year, NATO members have been actively issuing newsletters , writing academic articles, and holding panel discussions on the topic. According to rumors, new strategic documents are being prepared.
In my opinion, after the notoriously unsuccessful evolution of terms over the past ten years, the phrase cognitive warfare was chosen poorly. First, in 2014, we used the term “Russian propaganda”, then disinformation, misinformation, cyber threats, critical thinking, digital hygiene, media literacy, psy-ops… Finally, Western countries began to institutionalize the term FIMI (foreign information manipulation and interference) , that is, instead of a definition in one word, it was decided to describe the phenomenon in four words and a rather funny abbreviation that resembles a kitten’s nickname.
When we talk about cognitive confrontation, we mostly mean interference in cognitive processes or manipulation by distorting reality. In this area, NATO has a specific established term : cognitive superiority . Roughly speaking, cognitive superiority is the state of victory in cognitive warfare , what needs to be achieved. In the classical sense, cognitive superiority refers to a perception of the battlefield and a perception of reality that is not distorted by the “fog of war” or deception operations (misleading the enemy). In other words, there is a certain “reference reality”, the most accurate and undistorted perception and awareness of which by a military commander leads to the adoption of successful decisions that can guarantee victory on the battlefield.
This was demonstrated even more simply to NATO partners during exercises with Ukrainians in the Baltics. Any military unit operating a “mavic” drone during exercises nullifies all hypothetical opponents, because it can see them, but they cannot. Ironically, NATO officers then asked the Ukrainians not to use drones during exercises, because “the other guys find it offensive that they always lose.”
However, this understanding of cognitive advantage is correct only for physical space – the battlefield. Because physical reality with its landscape, subjects and objects is more or less unchanging: the better you know the battlefield, the better you fight. However, when we talk about political discussions around whether Russia is a separate civilization, whether what is written in the Epstein files is true, or whether China has a right for Taiwan — in such matters there is no “reference, axiomatic reality.” And if there is no benchmark for facts and axiomatic statements, then cognitive superiority becomes a multidimensional space where the ability to change the thinking of other people provides you with victory.
In other words, cognitive superiority is transformed from a defensive tactic (“I am stronger because I understand reality better than my opponent”) to an offensive one (“I am stronger because I can create my own reality for my opponent”). However, this transformation is feared by our Western partners like fire, because it “could lead to escalation.”
That’s why the current understanding of cognitive warfare has so many flaws and I don’t really like it. But who’s going to ask me? The budgets for 2026 with the words “cognitive” have already been approved. Or as my warrant officer used to say: “aluminium means aluminium.”
Growing consciousness
And yet, this year we have taken an epochal step forward. And the war of 2026 will move even further into our consciousness and the consciousness of our adversaries, where it has been going on since 1708. Our task is to support the emerging trends of “adulthood” – the affirmation and strengthening of Ukrainian identity and the development of cognitive technologies, which under certain conditions can become effective in the fight against Shchedrovych’s reflexive management.
In my opinion, the discussion around the process of identity affirmation and strengthening, as well as the development and distribution of content, should be a priority for us for one simple reason. If we look closely again at the semantics of the terms used by our Western partners, we will see that they continue to carry only defensive meanings:
- Wall of drones;
- Countering disinformation;
- Critical thinking;
- Digital hygiene.
All these categories and images do not even allow the idea that we should do anything to the enemy or influence him in any way. All this is aimed solely at defense, not attack. Instead, the process of asserting identity has no physical or virtual boundaries. The assertion of Ukrainian identity, Ukrainian “soft power” can take place all over the planet — in those corners of it that interest us. It is a process of unlimited dissemination of how Ukrainians perceive reality. And if we know exactly how we perceive reality, and work hard enough to spread this knowledge among other people — who knows… Everything would be – Ukraine and forever.
