Business Autonomy: Why Taxes and Donations Are No Longer Enough

Ukrainian Business Has Learned to Survive. Its Next Challenge Is to Shape the Future
Ukrainian business has learned to survive, build companies, and support the country in times of crisis. Its next challenge is to learn how to shape the nation's future.

Over the past decades, Ukrainian business has traversed a path that took generations for many other countries. It learned to build companies under constant uncertainty, weather crises, adapt to drastic changes in the rules of the game, and keep growing where many would have chosen to abandon any long-term plans.

The full-scale war became yet another trial—one that revealed not only the resilience of Ukrainian entrepreneurs, but also their capacity to take on responsibilities far beyond the traditional scope of business. Many companies became anchors for their teams, local communities, the military, and the country as a whole.

However, after the war, Ukraine may once again face a familiar historical risk: standing strong, yet failing to build a long-term trajectory of development. Passing another test, preserving itself, and mobilizing at a critical moment—only to return to a state where the country's future is shaped not by those who create, but by those skilled at exploiting institutional weakness.

Under these conditions, Ukrainian business faces a new, complex, yet compelling task: to step out of the role of a bystander and become a driving force in shaping the rules of the game. This represents a profound internal shift—a willingness among entrepreneurs to take responsibility for the bigger picture, build institutions, craft long-term strategy, and foster an environment where business can thrive not in spite of the system, but alongside the nation.

Between Personal Success and Collective Power
There is a pattern in Ukrainian history that has accompanied us for centuries. Ukrainians have always been enterprising, talented, and capable of creating anew. History is rich with examples of people of Ukrainian origin achieving extraordinary success across various countries, industries, and professions. Business, science, engineering, culture, technology—it is hard to find a field where Ukrainians have not left a distinct mark.

Sometimes I think that if someone were to systematically study the global contribution of the Ukrainian diaspora, the sheer scale of that impact would come as a surprise even to us. All around the world, you can find Ukrainians who have founded companies, led major organizations, contributed to scientific breakthroughs, or built new markets.

Yet alongside this lies another historical pattern. For centuries, we have achieved success more often as individuals than as an organized force. In many ways, this was the byproduct of our history. For generations, Ukrainians lived trapped between different empires that systematically eroded our belief in our own agency. A mindset took root: one could be a talented individual, a successful entrepreneur, or a skilled professional, but one shouldn't aspire to anything greater. Unsurprisingly, many Ukrainians who found themselves abroad ended up becoming part of other nations' success stories.

To my mind, this is precisely where the line is drawn between a collective of successful individuals and true agency (subjectness). True agency begins at the moment when one is ready to think beyond the bounds of a personal project, company, or career, and start thinking in terms of a shared future.

And it is here that Ukrainian business encounters an even deeper challenge. Even when the resources, experience, and ambition for this level of thinking emerge, an internal perception often persists that the nation and the state exist separately from us—and therefore, the responsibility for their future lies on someone else's shoulders.

A Mindset We Have Yet to Overcome
Our current reality is this: business creates jobs, pays taxes, supports the armed forces, invests in national development, and assumes numerous functions that, in more stable societies, typically fall under the domain of state institutions. In return, business expects only one thing from the state: to at least stay out of the way.

There are understandable historical reasons for this stance. For centuries, state institutions were associated with external control, coercion, or serving foreign interests, rather than acting as instruments for achieving public goals. In such an environment, the natural impulse was to keep power at a distance, focusing instead on family, one’s own business, and immediate circles of responsibility.

The problem, however, is that this mindset continues to reproduce itself even when it comes to our own sovereign state. One can still hear arguments that the state and society exist on entirely different planes. Yet this is precisely the tipping point between being an object and becoming a subject.

What does true agency look like in this context? It doesn't mean entering politics—it means shaping the rules.

Shaping Rules over Entering Politics
Participating in shaping the nation's future does not require running for public office. I believe it is crucial to distinguish between politics and policy.

Politics is the struggle for power, party competition, and holding government posts.

Policy is participating in shaping the rules, institutions, and long-term decisions that dictate a country’s development for decades to come.

This, I believe, is where the natural role of business lies. An entrepreneur is under no obligation to become a politician. Their core mission is to build companies, launch initiatives, create systems, and drive the economy forward. But that does not absolve them of responsibility for the quality of the environment in which all of this exists. In practical terms, business agency manifests in three key ways:

Building a New Elite: Not an elite of wealth, status, or raw power, but a community of individuals who view the country as their personal responsibility. History demonstrates that no nation truly develops without leaders willing to think and act on behalf of the whole.

Formulating a Long-Term Vision: We have learned to survive, adapt quickly, and respond to crises. But the country needs more than just solutions for the next twelve months. It needs a strategy for decades ahead—a clear vision of what we want Ukraine to look like in fifty or a hundred years.

Establishing Institutions: Creating entities capable of sustaining this long-term agenda regardless of election cycles or generational shifts.

Ideas alone do not work. Realizing them requires mechanisms, resources, infrastructure, and organizations that can consistently drive the nation forward. This is why I speak not just about organizations as standalone entities, but about building the nation’s intellectual infrastructure: ecosystems capable of generating long-term meaning, shaping future visions, training leaders, and crafting solutions before political demand for them even arises.

On the global stage, this role is often fulfilled by think tanks—independent policy and strategic research centers that operate beyond single election cycles or political factions, focusing instead on the nation's long-term agenda.

Their role becomes paramount during periods when state institutions are still fragile, undergoing transformation, or incapable of formulating long-term strategies on their own. In such moments, businesses, expert communities, and civic leaders can step forward not as supplicants asking for ready-made solutions, but as their primary authors.

This is precisely how many successful nations progressed in the past. In the United States, independent centers like the Brookings Institution or the Council on Foreign Relations have spent decades maintaining a long-term strategic vision regardless of changing presidential administrations. In South Korea, an organized business community became a full partner in shaping the nation's industrial strategy during the early stages of its economic boom. In Estonia, much of the vision for a digital state originated not just within government corridors, but within the entrepreneurial and tech communities.

A Historical Opportunity We Cannot Afford to Waste
The full-scale war has brought monumental losses and profound trials, yet it has also compelled the world to see Ukraine in a new light. Today, the world knows far more about our nation than it did just a few years ago. Ukraine has gained not only global attention, but also a level of moral authority that no diplomatic effort or marketing campaign could ever buy.

However, history teaches us that such opportunities do not translate into lasting success automatically.

Every generation is given its chance. The only question is whether it possesses the capacity to turn that chance into a long-term trajectory of development—or whether it will once again limit itself to solving the immediate problems of the day.

https://biz.nv.ua/ukr/sviy-biznes/ukrajinskiy-biznes-vid-vizhivannya-do-formuvannya-maybutnogo-krajini-50624823.html