The Third Ruin. The national idea of "who to lie to" and its consequences

There is a phenomenon in Ukrainian history that is difficult to understand today without mentioning it. The ruins are periods of Ukrainian counter-reformation with internecine struggle for redistribution of property (Polish, Crimean Tatar, St. Petersburg, Soviet) with an emphasis on "multi-vector" foreign policy. In each Ruin, the tactical tasks of the struggle for power and the covert interests of the Ukrainian pseudo-elite dominated the strategic goals of statehood. Each of the Ruins showed the inability of the elite to offer the people consolidating goals, was accompanied by the government's refusal to rely on its own people, focus on external forces and ended in the loss of statehood. The paper considers the situation in Ukraine during the years of "independence".