Individual Vital Competencies under Energy Collapse as Determinants of Security: Insights from Ukraine’s Resistance to Military Aggression

Abstract

Abstract

This article offers a conceptual and analytical examination of prolonged energy collapse in wartime and post-crisis environments as a form of vital-crisis reality, in which infrastructural instability becomes a multidimensional challenge at the individual level. The study focuses on individual vital competencies as key determinants of security, understood as an integrated system of resources enabling individuals to preserve vitality, sustain life, and maintain professional functionality under conditions of resource scarcity, disrupted communication, and persistent threat.

The research addresses a methodological gap in existing literature, where energy collapse is primarily analysed within technical and security frameworks, while the individual’s competency-based capacity to function under prolonged instability remains insufficiently conceptualised. To address this gap, the article develops an integrated model of vital competencies encompassing physical-vital, psychological-mental, cognitive-orientational, moral-value, and professional-functional dimensions.

Drawing on Ukraine’s empirical experience of resistance to military aggression, the study demonstrates that energy collapse functions as a systemic condition requiring continuous mobilisation of individual resources. In this context, vital competencies act as practical determinants of security, ensuring life preservation and sustained professional responsibility.

The findings contribute to competence-based approaches within the European lifelong learning framework by introducing a crisis-oriented perspective grounded in real conditions of prolonged instability.

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