They have not yet learned to trust the state (we have reasons for this) as institutions, but to literally give their lives for their own state and identity.

The Ukrainian state is not (yet) to be trusted, but the alternative is so much worse? Reminds me a bit of one of the quotes from Churchill, "democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.”

Distrust for the state institutions goes a bit hand in hand with corruption. Ukraine used to be famous for corruption. I regret not having visited Ukraine the last twenty years - but things were pretty terrible on my last visits, some time around year 2000. I was held up at the border crossing between Russia and Ukraine for 12 hours, the border guards insisted Norwegian passports should be blue (or, perhaps they rather meant filled with paper money upon delivery for inspection). The road police was just dissolved more than a decade later due to the problems with corruption, I for sure had some troubles with them. Like, on a nice, straight road with high speed limit they would put up a speed limit sign 30 and subtext "2 km", with no other purpose than that they could sit ready with the laser equipment and issue fines 1.9 km further down the road. Etc. I was so disappointed to learn that there even in those times are still big problems on the border crossings, border guards pillaging from aid shipments passing and allowing people willing to pay the right price to skip the queues (or, in the case of men, getting out at all).

I'd say we have the opposite problem here in Norway - too much trust in the state and state institutions. with regard of corruption, many Norwegians seem to believe there is no such thing as corruption in Norway. That's a big problem, I think it's quite easy to get away with it in Norway because people simply aren't looking for it.