"Ladies and gentlemen, you have the privilege of discovering your strength in preparation for the storm rather than within it. The question is, will you use that opportunity wisely? Now, speaking of losing things, Ukraine is not a glove or a wallet to be lost or found. When in 2014, it was offered deep concern and Russia's brazen violation of international law went unpunished, Ukrainians kept fighting, reforming their political institutions and strengthening their army. The loss of Crimea did not bring about peace. It facilitated escalation. When in the early days of 2022, the country was left to its own devices in all but words, remember those so-called experts who mistook self-importance for knowledge and said that Ukraine was going to fall in three days. Well, Ukrainians kept fighting. In the fifth year of the full-scale invasion and the 12th since Russia started its aggression against Ukraine, Ukraine is still not lost. The claim that sooner or later Russia will win simply because it's so much larger doesn't even work as a self-fulfilling prophecy anymore. Not because the US props up Ukraine, it doesn't, or because the EU enables it to fight on. Europe's recent political mobilization is largely a response to the threat from Washington, not from Moscow. Ukraine hasn't fallen because its people don't let it fall. However, there is a way in which Ukraine has been lost to much of the world for quite some time. It's been lost in the shadow that an empire casts over its peripheries. Exploring peripheries, be they overseas or in our European neighborhood, requires shaking off our own imperial gaze. It means listening to those with experience of resistance rather than those with a tradition of subjugating others."