Between the craters in Ukrainian black soil and the ruins in the Middle East today, there is much more in common than an outside observer is accustomed to admitting. It’s long been not just about two wars in different regions. It’s about a similar confrontation where the question is not the front line, not the government’s rating, and not another diplomatic gesture, but the very right of a country to exist, defend itself, and refuse the role of a victim. This is precisely why Israel and Ukraine irritate a significant part of the world so much. Not because they are at war. And not even because they demand support. But because both countries, at a critical moment, refused to die quietly, conveniently, and without extra noise for those who prefer to watch the catastrophe from a safe distance.
On April 3, 2026, (ukr.) in “Ukrainian Pravda” Hlib Bityukov, a veteran, writes.
The world loves comfort but does not love those who remind of the cost of security
The illusion that security can be rented
Too many states in recent years have lived as if security is a service that someone else will always provide.
The wealthy countries of the Persian Gulf could look at Iranian expansion through the glass of skyscrapers, hoping that the US would keep the situation under control and not let the Strait of Hormuz become a weapon of pressure.
Such a model of thinking seems rational for a long time.
Why take on extra risk if you can wait it out, bypass it, shift responsibility to an ally, an international coalition, or another resolution? But the problem is that the bill for a comfortable illusion eventually comes anyway. And almost always it comes at the most inconvenient moment — when there is no time left for preparation.
Israel has seen this bill many times. Ukraine too.
And that is why both countries today think differently than a significant part of the outside world. They can no longer afford the luxury of believing that someone will appear at the last moment and fix everything.
Why those who act are irritating
The world is more willing to sympathize with the weak than to respect those who truly resist. As long as a country looks doomed and asks for help, it is understandable and emotionally convenient. But as soon as it starts to respond, rebuild, preemptively strike, and demonstrate agency, it immediately becomes ‘complex’, ‘inconvenient’, ‘too harsh’, and ‘dangerous for stability’.
This is one of the main reasons why Israel and Ukraine so often cause irritation even among those who are formally on their side.
Both countries destroy the cozy myth that aggression can be waited out and evil can be persuaded. They show the opposite: in a critical moment, the one who survives is not the one who better explains their rightness, but the one who is ready to defend it every day.
Israel and Ukraine have become an inconvenient reminder of adult reality
Agency is not given, it is seized
The main thing that unites Israel and Ukraine today is the refusal to live in the logic of others’ decisions. For too long, both Kyiv and Jerusalem existed in a world where big players were ready to discuss their security as an element of a broader combination. Sometimes it was called containment. Sometimes diplomacy. Sometimes realism. But at the core, there was almost always the same desire: for countries under threat to behave quietly and not disturb the convenient architecture of international compromises.
Israel chose a different path. It did not wait for the Iranian threat to fully materialize into an irreversible reality. It acted preemptively, based on simple logic: if the threat is already being built, then waiting for its final maturation means consciously bringing the catastrophe closer.
Ukraine came to a similar understanding more heavily and later, already through full-scale war, losses, destroyed cities, and too high a price for years of self-deception. But it came to the same conclusion: agency is not issued by international quota, it has to be clawed out, maintained, and confirmed in conditions where you have already been mentally written off.
The same methods of aggression in different landscapes
For years, Iran has been building a network of proxy forces around Israel — in Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, and other points in the region.
Russia acts similarly in Europe, only its tools more often have a political, energy, and informational form.
Somewhere it’s pressure through allied regimes, somewhere through useful politicians, somewhere through the fear of escalation that paralyzes foreign will.
The landscape is different, the methodology is the same.
First, a network of dependency is created, then a network of fear, then a network of justifications for why the threat cannot be responded to too harshly. As a result, the aggressor gets not only room for maneuver but also a whole layer of external observers who explain to the victim why it should be more restrained.
That is why the experience of Israel and Ukraine today is important not only for themselves. Both countries, each in their own way, have already proven that resistance can be not a reaction of despair, but a form of strategic thinking. In this sense, NAnovosti — Israel News | Nikk.Agency sees here not just a similarity of two conflicts, but a common logic of an era in which the right to exist has to be confirmed by action, not by others’ promises.
Why this is not only a tragedy but also a point of rethinking
War exposes what has been postponed ‘for later’ for years
One of the most unpleasant truths of war is that it almost never arises from nothing.
It becomes a consequence of accumulated mistakes, postponed decisions, underestimated threats, and the habit of hoping that danger will somehow dissipate on its own. What Ukraine and Israel are experiencing today is not a whim of history and not a mystical inevitability. It is the cruel result of a too-long period when alarming signals were perceived as noise.
If you look at the state as a living organism, then war often turns out to be not a sudden illness, but a severe exacerbation of what has been ignored for too long. It does not create all problems anew, but only makes visible the cause-and-effect relationships that were previously hidden under the facade of peaceful everyday life.
That is why the current period, no matter how terrible it may be, simultaneously becomes a moment of rethinking. And for Ukraine and Israel, it is a chance to stop being the object of others’ calculations and finally establish themselves as architects of their own strength.
Security cannot be delegated forever
The main lesson that both countries are literally living through today sounds harsh but is extremely clear: security cannot be endlessly delegated. You can have allies, receive support, coordinate, build coalitions, and exchange technologies. But the core of protection must always remain your own.
Because at the moment of great danger, the outside world almost always starts counting risks, discussing formulations, seeking balance, and avoiding extra responsibility. And a country that is already being hit cannot wait for someone to finish another round of consultations.
Israel understood this long ago. Ukraine — at the cost of enormous losses.
And that is why both countries today appear to many as too harsh, too independent, and too inconvenient. But in reality, they simply recognized the adult truth earlier than others: in an era of chaos, not the most loved survive, but the most prepared.