Speakers: Anastasiia Lapatina, Edward Reese, Jakub Parusinski and Alexander Clarkson
Edward Reese: My name is Edward Reese. My pronouns are he/him. My identity is, I call it Queer.
Anastasiia Lapatina: Edward Reese works for the Ukrainian NGO called Kyiv Pride. He's currently living in Copenhagen, which means that this year he attended Pride events in countries all across Europe. So I called him because I wanted to hear about his experiences, and how Pride in Ukraine compares with the rest of Europe.
Edward: I had to leave Kyiv because of health issues, and I was representing Ukraine and leading Ukrainian groups on seven Pride parades in different countries in Sweden, Poland, Denmark, Germany, and Hungary.
Anastasiia: What was the Queer community in Ukraine like in general before Russia invaded?
Edward: We had a very big and bright vibrant community, so this year is our 10th anniversary and we celebrated it in Warsaw. We had different events, we had been working with advocating laws like anti-hate crime law, and gay marriage or civil unions law. I would say that, yes, it was kind of a European movement, so the whole pride movement stood for Ukraine. The whole pride movement in Europe, in Canada, in the US, in New Zealand, everywhere were standing for Ukraine, and it was really important for us to see and to feel.
After the invasion I would say that definitely many people left the country and I know that many people don't want to return because we still don't have all the nice things that like Iceland or Germany or Canada have right now. Anther thing is that LGBTQ soldiers are visible, there are a lot of them. There is an organisation of LGBTQ soldiers and veterans in Ukraine. Actually, I would say that this visibility of LGBTQ soldiers also changes the mindset of Ukrainians.
Because Ukrainians see that there are gay men, trans-people, lesbians, bisexuals, protecting Ukraine and fighting together with the cis-hetero people in the army on the front line. Ukrainian society is really changing and it's changing because of the invasion. It's changing because of the visibility of Queer activists and Queer soldiers. Definitely it's changing because we want to go to Europe and we want to go as far from Russia as possible. We know that Russia is like one of the most homophobic countries in the world, one of the countries with the most discriminative politics.
Anastasiia: How do you think the fight for LGBTQ rights in Ukraine relates to this fight against Russia?
Edward: Ukraine has to go as far from Russia as it's possible, and definitely the talk about human rights as a whole, not only LGBTQ rights, but human rights as a whole is very important because Russia definitely doesn't think about human rights at all. They don't think about human rights starting from 2013, at least when they introduced the anti-gay propaganda law.
Anastasiia: Russia's anti-gay law claims to be for the purpose of protecting children from information that advocates for denial of traditional family values. Putin signed this law in June of 2013. It bans any so-called propaganda about nontraditional sexual relationships among minors. Well, that's what Russia claims it does anyway.
Edward: In my personal opinion, anti-gay propaganda law in Russia was like the first step into this country becoming total empire and dictatorship. Understanding that human rights is the core value of any modern country which wants to grow, which wants to change, which wants to be better for their people, that like human rights is the main thing. I see that Ukrainians and our politics, our politicians start to understand this, definitely they start to understand this also because of all the rules for going into the EU. We have seen Zelensky signing the Istanbul Convention.
Anastasiia: So the Instanbul convention is a human rights treaty of the cons of Europe that combats violence against women and domestic violence. Ukraine ratified this treaty in the summer of 2022.
Edward: Now when we have this clearly paved path to European Union, they will have to do it and they will have to give us civil unions or gay marriage. They will have to give us anti-hate crime laws because if no, they will not be accepted, we will not be accepted in the union.
Anastasiia: How do you think then the lives of the Ukraniain Queer community will change if, or not if, but when we do become a part of the European Union?
Edward: I would say that the life of LGBTQ people in Ukraine will not become better, we will make it better. We will have to build this new life like we are already rebuilding destroyed cities. We will have to rebuild this life, we will have to create it. In some places from stretch like from zero, but I know that there are enough people in Ukraine who have strengths, resources, and big will to do it.
Anastasiia: Even during the war, Ukraine has managed to expand civil liberties, embracing new legislation that protects human rights like the Istanbul Convention, and this matters because there are many manifestations of Europe. One of them is that all of this legislation is meant to protect consumers, but also vulnerable groups and minorities. From Message Heard and The Kyiv Independent, you're listening to Power Lines: From Ukraine to the World.
Jakub Parusinski: In this series, we're going to be mapping the undercurrents and global consequences of the war in Ukraine, beginning in Kyiv and following the roads out wherever they may lead. I'm Jakub Parusinski.
Anastasiia: I am Anastasiia Lapatina. This week we're looking at Ukraine's place in Europe to find out where our country sits as both a European and a potential EU nation.
Jakub: Nastya, do you feel European as a Ukrainian, and actually what does feeling European even mean?
Anastasiia: I think being European is definitely a huge part of what being Ukrainian means to me just because when the Revolution of Dignity happened in 2014, we already talked about how that of course was Ukrainians fighting for our European values, and for being a part of the EU. All I know is that my fellow countryman had to die for their European values. So for me and for millions of my fellow Ukrainians, this isn't just about better roads and less corruption, and better economy. For me, this is something much deeper than that.
It's a fundamental part of who I am because my ancestors had to fight for it and had to die for it.
Jakub: I think that's a really important part of what Europe means for Ukrainians, because of the sacrifice that has been made, but Europe is complicated. It's not just one thing, it's you have a Europe that is essentially all of the EU bureaucracy. You have EU, which is based on a Europe of values, you have a Europe of common history. The Revolution of Dignity was called Euromaidan and I think the values that it was fighting for were very clear. I'm not sure that those values are also something that all Europeans would associate with Europe.
Anastasiia: Yes, of course, because for so many people in Europe, their standards of living, their democratic values, the way their bureaucracy and government functions, it's a given for them. They've been born into that system, they didn't have to fight for it necessarily. I'm not blaming them, but I'm just saying that there is this fundamental gap in understanding of what it can really take to get where we are. We see this gap very vividly, I think right now during this war because there is a reason why Ukrainians complain about talking to people in the West about the war.
It is very difficult. It's extremely challenging, getting across the points that there are governments that are much, much worse than some of the corrupt Western governments. People really have to understand that they don't have it perfect, but they have it much, much better than many other countries in the world. They have to continue fighting to make it even better, but they also really have to be very grateful for what they have because we don't have many of the things they do.
Jakub: To delve deeper into this, we wanted to speak to someone who has spent their academic career exploring European politics and analysing the geopolitical repercussions of the evolving situation in Ukraine. We got in touch with Alexander Clarkson, a lecturer for German and European studies at King's College, London. Alex's work specializes in diasporas and how people connect the politics of their country of origin with the broader politics of their adopted EU homes. He's also half Ukrainian, and one of the most prolific commentators on the war, so he was the perfect person to give us some context about Ukraine's place in Europe.
Maybe a very broad opening, why does Ukraine matter to Europe?
Alexander: Oh, there are so many answers to that. People always ask this question in the present tense. Why does Europe matter now? Why does Ukraine matter now? The first thing I would say is, Ukraine mattering to Europe is nothing new. This territorial space, that is now modern Ukrainian state, it has mattered historically. It mattered in terms of a space through which different empires rub up against each other. It's a political space in which the Ottoman Empire and the Ottomans are as important as the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg or the Poles or the Tsarist Empire in shaping Ukrainian identity.
I think the role of the Ottomans needs more discussion. All these four empires that come into contact in this space, they shape the politics outlook, culture, partly of the peoples who live the space who come together. Create a form of Ukrainian nationhood that at times includes different religious and ethnic boundaries, at times does not include them. There are far-right variants of Ukrainian identity, there are leftist variants of Ukrainian identity. This is a space that is one in which different political entities and different ideas of how to organise Europe and European society have both clashed with each other.
In this space, a political culture has emerged, or political cultures have emerged. In response to this that have developed their own ideas and their own models and their own philosophies, and ideologies of how to organize economy, society and culture. Ukraine matters not just in terms of the strategic issues that we've discussed, it's mattered to the very idea of how Europeans think of themselves, position themselves in the world, how they organise themselves. It's the clash of two different understandings of how politics, culture, society, and economy should be organised.
It's a clash between these two through the EU concept idea that Ukraine accepts and want to be a part of and Russian old European. An old imperial model of the 19th and 18th centuries of “Might is Right” and imperial domination of spheres of influence. It's the clash of these two ideas that's played out within Ukrainian society. That Ukraine society has affected influence in the wider world. Plays out in the way in which Ukrainians have largely opted for the EU understanding of how to organize European society, economic, culture.
The way in which that's actually generated this immense tension and conflict with Russia. Ukraine matters, it matters a lot. It's always mattered.
Jakub: Would it be fair to say that to a large extent, the ideas of what Europe is and what modern politics is both in terms of the tools, as well as the ideologies, they have routinely been tested in Ukraine for the last at least two centuries, perhaps three centuries.
Alexander: I think that's a whole set of ideas, a whole set of concepts. Not just the ones that we would assume in terms of the current debate of national identity and nationalism, and how do you construct -- how do you in this space, different peoples come together and classes come together and over time begin to agree that they have this shared language. It's not even a shared language is like a Cossack ethos, the Cossack myth essentially holds everything together.
You don't even have to speak Ukrainian for that you have to buy into a certain understanding of what the Cossack myth is, and how you organise society and identity through it. And the Cossack myth, it's not just a language or a faith, it's an idea of how to organise society. That to be Ukrainian, is to be your own boss. I think from that flows a lot of the way in which this myth because it's also quite mythical flows, this idea of what is to be Ukrainian and how Ukrainians respond to war crisis and opportunities.
If we take that starting point as this really tension between ethnonational and ethnolinguist, or sometimes even racist kind of a nationalism Ukraine, and a kind of concept of civic nationalism, that's from the very start of the Ukrainian nation-building project. Civic nationalism builds on the Cossack ethos, you can speak all kinds of different languages, but you buy into that. This idea between civic and ethno, really that starts, that's really from the start with Ukraine. There's other ideas like beyond the ones that we're debating now, in terms of push.
Of like Modern Trade Unionism, concepts of socialism, anarchism, Zionism. It's one of the European cultural civilizational cradles of a whole range of ideologies like Trade Unionism hits Ukraine and hits Kyiv, and it's all these Jewish in Ukraine scenes. There's a revolutionary ethos that separates from Moscow. Of course, it's hugely influenced by Russia. I'm not someone who's going to go out and say, well, “Ukraine isn't Russian and was never influenced”. Of course, it's hugely influenced by events in Moscow.
It's also hugely influenced by events in Istanbul, Vienna, Berlin, also through the Catholic connection with Rome, Paris. Then you look through the diaspora in North America. There's all these influences flowing in together, but it's also influencing them. Ukraine isn't some peripheral entity. The states, Romania, UNESCO, the whole set of other traditions. These countries are at the very heart of ideas and concepts that West Europeans think they have a monopoly on. And I think one of the things that we need to emphasise is that this isn't a peripheral state over there.
This is a state at the heart of everything that shapes European social, political. culture, security debate. Through that, it's not just a geostrategic issue of what's happening on our borders and our security, and cultural issue. Actually Ukrainians are actually European. They're one of us, which is very much what we saw happen. That shock in February was just realising, no, they are our people, we're going to support them. This is all a product, not just of something that's just happening now. This is a product of Ukrainians, but also Poles, or Russians, Romanians, being at the heart of all of these developments.
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Jakub: Look, coming into contact with different models and cultures is one of the main ways that new ideas emerge. For centuries in Western Europe, a lot of them came from the colonies, to be frank. Just look at the role of the empire in British literature, The Jungle Book, Livingstone, all of that. But those colonies were far off, and the ideas were distant and took time to arrive. In Ukraine, new ideas, and new models and cultures arrived suddenly, and usually quite violently. But I wanted to turn it today, do you think that's something that is happening again?
What are the new ideas and leaders that are being born out of this war?
Anastasiia: That's a very interesting question because I think it's not that we're getting new ideas. It's that the idea is that one seemed very radical, and were a very close circle, Western Europe group of people that believes in them. This is now a very normal, very mainstream belief. So for example, the fact that we now actively advocate for a reduction of Russian music, Russian language, or Russian literature, or Russian films. Just actively separating ourselves from the Russian cultural sphere, that was once a pretty radical thought.
Right now, it's very mainstream. People with whom I've argued and advocated for what once was radical, and they argued back at me, we've now switched where they believe in this even stronger than I do. And now I see that it's really no longer about where you live, and your past. Now, the absolute majority of the country is on the same page. We want to be as far from Russia as possible. I think it's not that some completely new ideas are emerging. These Ideas have always been here because Russia has always been a threat to us, but some people would see it more clearly than others at various points of time.
Jakub: So what you're saying is sort of throughout history, the fact that Ukraine went through all of these wars and other hardships, it essentially acts as an accelerant. Ideas that would have been at the fringes for a very long time moved to the center very quickly. As whatever group was trying to survive or to build a new reality for itself, accepted more radical ideas. That's something that we saw with anarchism, with Trade Unionism, with Zionism, all of these ideas that came out of Ukraine, or where Ukraine played a large part in forging them.
Anastasiia: Yes, totally, but the war made everything political. Because there was this whole discussion about how before the word, there were many people who would say that they're outside of politics [foreign language], as we would say. We, the people who work in political spheres and who are part of the civil society, we really hated that and would make fun of those people. To us, it was ludicrous because everything about your daily life is inherently political. Especially in a country like ours, where if you don't keep track on your government if you don't keep them accountable, things go south very quickly.
I think this politicisation of our society is a very, very good thing. I just hope that it's going to last for after the war periods, and we're not just going to go back to square one. All right, so where are we going next?
Jakub: Next, I wanted to see how much the political and economic situation in Ukraine during the '90s and the naughts affected its role on the European stage.
If we look at the last 200 years, we have Ukraine as a key scene of the European story. What about the last 30 years?
Alexander: First of all, we have to be -- even if you critique a discourse -- you have to acknowledge that Ukraine in the '90s was pretty screwed up. Nobody's going to argue with that. Ukraine was coming out of a collapsing Soviet economy, an economy that continues to collapse in the course of the 1990s. There are old embedded political elites that either switch sides or change the position, or mix of it.
Many societies in Eastern Europe are inevitably going to go through immense pressure. They have a dysfunctional political-economic model in the 1980s, 1970s.They have corrupt and overpowerful security forces, security services, and police forces that are never properly reformed or correct in Ukraine.
Ukraine has this problem many post-colonial states have after collapsing empire. That the relationships that all the other governments have is still with the imperial master with imperial authorities. Of course, it takes time for Ukraine to make its voice heard on a more European level to be taken seriously, particularly by the Germans and the French over the course of the 1990s and the aughts.
If you're coming in from Berlin to Kyiv, in 1992 or '93, if you're trying to impress Berlin, take us seriously. It's going to be difficult. There's also all kinds of genuine dysfunctions that aren't solved and genuine problems in Ukrainian politics. So the story of the last 30 years has been that Ukraine is underestimated. Ukraine is much more resilient. Ukraine is stronger than people think.
We still have to take the reasons seriously, both negative reasons i.e. this fixation on Moscow, which is very much to Ukraine's disadvantage because Berlin, in particular, is always focused on trying to have a special relationship with Russia, which steamrolls Ukrainian concerns. We also have to understand that that's okay and that's bad but there's also a reason why they struggled to take Ukraine seriously because Ukraine is in a messy state for a lot of this 30-year period.
Jakub: Absolutely. You look at the first couple of decade and a half, let's say and there's this chaos as you mentioned. There's problems all around Europe that are more pressing, more urgent. The Orange Revolution, was that a turning point, or did that happen later?
Alexander: I always make this an important point. I am very connected with Ukraine through family but I'm not Ukrainian Ukrainian because I'm diaspora and diaspora is a different perspective. I very much remember from the diaspora perspective, you could see people getting their hopes up and completely misreading what was happening. Obviously, some of what was happening in the Orange Revolution in 2004-2005 was a genuine civic moment and a genuine attempt to bring a degree of unity but still you have these regional divisions which Yanukovych played on.
A lot of it was an inter-oligarchic power play, and a lot of people felt shafted afterwards. At the time, it seems much more of a popular moment than if you look back than it was. I think that's something that Maidan later on in 2013 struggled with, because people said, "Oh, we've been done away with this Orange Revolution. Come on, it's bullshit or not." It took a month for people to figure out it wasn't bullshit.
Jakub: Maidan was completely different. It had a bottom-up nature of I think, very civic driven versus-- The Orange Revolution, the protesters bust in with the signs and everything. Look, you need some kind of infrastructure behind you to even make that happen. That's something that wasn't present on Maidan in 2013.
Alexander: I think also, it's interesting that Maidan was actually-- over time, it did get a lot of financial support, but there was a sense of whole business networks, new money like IT. The IT sector, for example. People whose business models are built around export to the EU, who were not necessarily naturally going to be pro-Maidan, but they're like, "You know what, we have an opportunity now to be our own guys. Not to listen to some stupid oligarch from somewhere living in Switzerland to tell us what to do. We can be our own business networks, we can operate as groups."
Mikhail Minakov is a smart political scientist, observed this really, really aptly in saying that Maidan is a bottom thing that's crucial but there is a lot of support it gets. Not from the oligarchs, but a lot of people who saw an opportunity to say, "You know what, I can emancipate myself from the system. I can be my--" It was a very Ukrainian instinct. “Screw you, I want to be my own guy.”
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Jakub: From everything that I've known and I've seen Ukraine in the '90s, and the early naughts was a pretty miserable place. You had runaway inflation, the state was falling apart, lots of criminal organisations flourishing.
Anastasiia: This is all I know about the '90s is like poverty and the bandits. That's what everyone constantly talks about.
Jakub: Well but it’s kind of true. The stories to come out of the '90s are crazy, and it was a pretty lawless place.
Anastasiia: I do remember even before the Revolution of Dignity, I was definitely very aware of this almost mystical time of the Orange Revolution. I remember the adults talking about it. I was totally aware of this revolutional spirit. Now that I'm reflecting back, that seemed so natural to me, so normal, even though it's not. Actually, you don't see this very often in Germany or France if at all, and you don't see revolutions. Whereas to me, because this is just what our recent history has been like, it was very normal for me.
I just grew up thinking that all right, when people are unhappy with the government, they take the streets. It was the most natural response in the world to me.
Jakub: That's what Alex is also getting to here. I think one of the quintessentially Ukrainian features or characteristics is this attitude of like, "Screw you, I want to be my own leader. I want to be independent and do what I want." I think no one brings down governments and leaders or topples the powerful like Ukrainians. That is clearly something that is in the blood.
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So for me, one of the things that changed actually after the Orange Revolution that had very little to do with the Orange Revolution is the change in Europe. So 2004, you have the enlargement. I wonder, do you think that made a remarkable change in terms of how Europe approached Ukraine? After 2004, you start to have central Europeans within European power structures.
Alexander: I think there's two levels to this. You got the second level, the accession. That's crucial. I completely agree with that. The first level, unfortunately, we have to wind back a bit to 1992. Any of your listeners who are EU citizens will absolutely know what I'm talking about, and most outside will not. It's called the Treaty of Maastricht. At the very same time, there was something agreed called Schengen. The Schengen accords. Everybody in EU knows what this is. Everybody around the EU knows what this is because this defines our lives.
The foundations of our entire political, economic, social, cultural system in Europe is built around Schengen and Maastricht. I think the issue with this is you've got to understand that what Ukraine is beginning to build a relationship with is the Europe of Maastricht. What Maastricht does is it takes this loosely organised, what was called the European Community, or the European Economic Community.
Beyond that was built around what was known as the single market, which is market integration and realises that if you want a shared economic market, to create peace in Europe, so everybody's so economically interdependent with one another, they won't fight each other anymore. Everybody wants this thing to work because that brings peace, and they realise by the '80s, you know what, this needs a political structure around it. You can't separate the geo-economic from the geopolitical. You can't separate the political from the economic. If you have to have a shared market, you're going to have to have political institutions to run it.
They create the Treaty of Maastricht, which means what Ukraine is getting into isn't some loose NAFTA-style free trade agreement between Canada, US, and Mexico. It's a system. It's a political system with political institutions and a parliament. By the time you get to 2004, a currency, but the whole idea of the EU is benefits also require obligations and a degree of subordination to the centre, which is Brussels. What this means for Ukraine is, by the time you get to the discussion about Ukrainian integration in the system, this isn't just a loose market.
Once you integrate into what is known as the Acquis, which is the foundation of the European EU legal system, it fundamentally rewires all parts of your political system. How your judiciary works, how relationship is between local and national government, how you organise taxation. It influences who you can give your passports to as citizens. It influences how you can control your borders. It increasingly, though, this is the reason why EU is not a full state, it hasn't got its own army, but increasingly has a security dimension.
Which means that when Ukraine faces this decision, you have the slow realisation on Ukrainian elites this isn't just about, “Hey, can we have access to this market, and we'll get all this stuff.” It means that we have to fundamentally reorganise the state at every different level. You do have this tension within the Ukrainian system over the course of the aughts about this question. We can see all the winners from this because they come out on top in 2013. All the people, the agro-oligarchs, they love it because of the export market.
There are other parts of the Ukrainian economy -- steel, coal, particularly concentrated in Donetsk, but not just -- that are going to be losers. They gradually begin to compute that this isn't just some market process, this is going to completely reshape the way the state functions. In the end, for a whole set of reasons, the Ukrainians decide to go for this. The parallel is that at the same time, the Russians are realising this.
And the Russians realise that if you integrate into this EU system, the way Russia exerts power over its neighbouring states, the way in which the Russian Putin system organises power within its system would no longer be possible. The Russians also begin to realise what EU integration means, and that's where it's interesting that you see a shift between 2002 and 2012. Not people not just in Kyiv but all the other major regional centres decide, actually, you know what, we're going to make money off this. This is good and this is an advantage. Actually, it gives us bargaining power to Kyiv. And in Moscow, people realise that if we allow the states around us to join this, we lose power over them, that equates to Brussels.
If we join this, the way we run our system in an authoritarian autocratic way and the way we want to run it, becomes impossible.
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Anastasiia: I think, for Ukrainians being a part of the European Union is more political than economical, although, of course, there is the economics part as well, because Ukraine isn't exactly the most prosperous country on the continent. I do still believe that for us, it's the rule of law and protection of human rights and minimal, if any corruption. It's those things that we've been fighting for so long. That's why we've had the revolutions. It's those things that drive mainly out this instinct of being with the EU. It's freedom.
It's this fundamental belief that each and everyone of us is free and can make their own choices and be protected by the government. Me having the same protection as a member of parliament and not having the amount of corruption that Russia has, for example. That's why we're trying to turn away from it. That's at least what I'm getting from it. What do you think, Jakub?
Jakub: I think you hit the nail on the head. My sense is that for most Ukrainians it's not even that, it's just political. It's also very symbolic. People are fed up to their core with the oligarchy and with the feeling of no consequences. That people can completely abuse the political system, abuse the economic system for their own benefit. That the rule is unequally applied to everyone. That's something that was at its core in Euromaidan.
I remember this one story that just it stuck to me like we were in Mezhyhirya -- that was the president Yanukovych's off-the-books private residence the day it fell -- we're walking through this territory that's the size of Monaco, which has private car collection, a pirate ship, gold fields, you name it.
Anastasiia: A zoo?
Jakub: It's crazy. Actually, it's not a zoo. The territory that you're talking about, basically, it has this separate wall and it's just near the entrance and it's pretty close to the main residence. As you walk through it, you have fields of apples and potatoes and you have a greenhouse, and then you have lots of these exotic animals. There is a road that leads back from this territory through a laboratory from which there is a tunnel that goes to Yanukovych's kitchen. That what people called the zoo was actually his private larder. That was his refrigerator.
Anastasiia: I'm not even vegan, but that just sounds terrible.
Jakub: No, it's really shocking. I remember walking through this territory and there was a middle-aged woman next to me and there was just this feeling in her eyes. It was an anger that was down to the abyss of hell. She was just saying, "We haven't eaten meat for months and he lived like this." It was just complete outrage.
Coming back to this idea, I think when Ukrainians think about the EU, it's about rejecting this system. I don't think there is a consciousness of just how much legislation and how much the shift in the political structures happens with the EU.
But I think that's what Moscow is very aware of. They're aware that once Ukraine integrates into Europe, it's very difficult to mess with it. All of its ways to influence the local situation get diminished or even eliminated. That's why we have this war. It's not about NATO, it's about Ukraine leaving a power, a system, and integrating into a different one in a way that is very difficult to reverse, maybe impossible.
Anastasiia: Yes, I totally agree.
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Jakub: We are now at the point where we have three different Europes or three different European ideas. We have one version of the European idea where it's a pragmatic, almost creature, comfort-driven exchange trade, travel. It's all underpinned by material benefits for the citizens. Then you have the second thing, which is what you described, which is actually a real super state. Then you have something which is-- I would say an ideological Europe. This is the first time that you have a country that is actively bled for Europe. Are these three versions of Europe able to coexist?
Alexander: I think we have to add an additional layer to this. We have to overlay that with the fact that Europe also has liberals and social Democrats and greens and left and far right, and Christian Democrats and a number of other ideologies. The reason why the EU is so resilient and why Ukraine's commitment to the EU increasingly also strong. Part of this model is that in Ukraine, as in the rest of the EU, sorry, it's not a member yet, but as part of wider system, the reason it's resilient is that every ideology has its own answer to these balance between these three factors.
Christian democrats have their understanding of what they want the EU and European integration to be for and so does the far left in much of Europe and so does the far right. The resilience of this model and I think where Ukraine becomes more and more like other states part of the EU system is increasingly-- Of course, there's still Euroscepticism and opposition to have increasingly every ideology in the spectrum finds its own argument to support European integration. Finds its own balance between the two, three factors that you described.
Ukraine becoming the country that bleeds and almost martyrs itself for Europe, which is also a very, very old Ukrainian nationalist theme by the way. Or national identity theme of we martyr ourselves our suffering. It's very Christian. We died for your sins.
Jakub: It is, but that's what has me worried because now I think you have a portion of Europe that understands that or even identifies with that myth. Then you have a portion of Europe that couldn't be further away from that. Is this a conflict that Europe can resolve or is it going to spin the two parts apart?
Alexander: I think what was really interesting is that it was not just the invasion itself. I think there are ways in which Putin could have done this at a lower scale. He could have gotten away with so much more. But by making it about the existential question of the existence of an entire European state and framing it in a kind of attack on not just Ukraine, but everything that EU seems to represent. Everything actually even parts of the European far-right see as part of their identity, it does trigger response not just in central Eastern Europe.
To understand the EU, you need to read Goscinny's read Asterix. You know Asterix’s village where they always fight and argue? But the moment they're threatened, they come together and beat up whoever threatens them. EU is Asterix's village. The one thing you want to do is if you want to split the EU and get your interests and mess up a place the Ukraine, is you don't want them to suddenly think that you're threatening them too.
The moment you do that, the Asterix villagers come together they drink their magic potion, and beat you up. You could totally see how Putin got it completely wrong. He's paying all this money to understand the EU through the SVR and FSB, and they got it completely and utterly wrong as to which Russians you don't push with the EU Europeans.
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Anastasiia: I think every Ukrainian who went to Europe after the war began has had a very similar experience of being just utterly overwhelmed with love and hospitality and solidarity and seeing Ukrainian flags everywhere. When I was in Poland just a week after the war began, I was shocked to see that you just had to show your Ukrainian passport and you got discounts in stores. You got free food, free beverages. You had just all of these amazingly kind things and there were fundraisers in every little coffee shop. There were flags everywhere.
Now we're used to it. I think that's remarkable when we talk about solidarity, those are not just words. I think you really see this immense level of support and it makes you feel less lonely in the face of this huge aggressor that Russia is.
Jakub: It's truly been remarkable to see how many people have participated. As you say just the level of emotional reaction is absolutely crazy. My question though is looking forward, the immediate reaction was incredible. Is there enough magic potion to hold because this war is going to last for a while?
Anastasiia: I think so because Ukrainians are doing everything that's possible and impossible to show that we're worth sticking up for. Remember that image with the key chain of the European flag? For our listeners, for context, in the first whatever month of war, there were an image from Bucha from Irpin, the outskirts of Kiev, where there were a lot of massacres. There was this photo of a woman, her dead body laying on the ground and in her hand, she had a key chain and they had a European flag on them.
Everyone shared their photos saying, "This is our application to join the European Union. This is what we do, we die for it."
Jakub: That's something that has to change. The EU cannot but change as a result of this. Its mythos, its identity has to change because of that. What I'm a little bit concerned about is that there is a lot of Europe for which that will be a very foreign idea. If you look at the willingness to fight for your country in Europe, there's a lot of countries where we're barely past the 20% line. In some cases, I think maybe even below it. This is a very different, almost a civilizational gulf. Now, I think there is an opportunity and Europe has this diversity of experiences that make it stronger and better.
But that is a big step. That is a big jump for Europe. I'm worried about whether it can basically make that leap.
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Anastasiia: On that note, what are we ending with here, Jakub?
Jakub: Finally I wanted to know about the future, both about Russia and Ukraine's future in the context of Europe.
The past 10 years, you have Euromaidan, the decision to break with the association agreement is reversed. Ukraine starts to move towards adopting part of the Acquis, slowly integrating into Europe. That's obviously put on hold now. If we look at the positions of European countries, vis-a-vis Ukraine, do you think we are destined for the next five years to only view it through a military prism? Or can we go back to, let's say economic civic integration?
Alexander: When people speak about Ukraine's European integration path, they always think of full membership. Whereas there's the EU and its member states and there's a core within that. The 22 states that are in the Euro, Schengen, of course, the single market, okay, to explain to Americans it's a travel-free area. We have no passport controls. You can move freely, move goods per people services capital and there's no controls on it. You just get on a plane from-- It's like flying from Cleveland to San Diego.
Then there are states that are not full members of the EU. They don't call the shots in the EU institutions, but for reasons of national pragmatism and the national compromise. Some countries like Norway or Switzerland were not comfortable with political union, but they realise they're fundamentally dependent on the European economy, EU economy. They need to be integrated in the single market because that's so much easier to trade and move people around and you benefit from this.
Now, that third ring, I think Ukraine's already in it. I think Ukraine's already in it because of what we call again the deep comprehensive free trade agreement and a separate agreement which gave Ukraine's limited travel access but no work access. De facto once the war starts, suddenly, there's just a complete drop in trading and quotas. Any vestige of limited access for the Ukrainians, the rest of the single market was dropped to save the Ukrainian economy. That's not coming back.
What we have to do, I think is make sure the institutional frameworks catch up with the defacto reality. I think Ukraine is already in a Norway pathway, a Switzerland pathway. That's like 90% of the walk into the EU system. That final 10% of full membership, that's the biggest and longest process because that final 10% would give Ukrainian's power over other EU citizens through the EU institutions. I think that's where we're going to have a lot of struggle on the EU side to say, "Yes, these are our guys and whatever”.
Do we want to give these really militarised people, this militarised society with its security conflicts-- do we want to give them a full seat on the European Council? Or can we veto the things that we want? Do we want 40-50 Ukrainian MEPs as of MEPs, maybe even in the European Parliament? That's going to be the biggest barrier.
Jakub: Is there appetite in Paris, Berlin, and Brussels to continue this journey?
Alexander: I think that so much prestige and power and influence has been sunken entering the survival of the Ukrainian state, largely in its current form. I think this is when we discuss, has Ukraine won this war. Ukraine has already won that war, Won that war in April. There's enough to ensure that the EU with the front lines as they are now, will invest a lot enormous resources with full Berlin-Paris support. Whether you have an equal level of commitment to ensuring that Ukraine regains all the territory it has lost since 2014, I am less sure of.
That's the war we're in now. Obviously, the Russian and Ukrainian ambitions may be greater. The Russian, but Ukraine ambitions are pretty much like, “Okay, this is now about war of a territory”. We've more or less hopefully secured our state. Now we want to get this land back. Whether the EU has the appetite to keep that going, I am less sure, and the danger about that is if you doesn't do that. Okay. We stop the precedent of wiping out an entire state, good. That state becomes part of the EU system pretty much already.
Are we going to then let the Russians get away with at least holding onto the precedent of redrawing other countries' borders? Because they'll do it again somewhere else. I do worry that if the EU doesn't have the patience to also let Ukraine fight the war to get its territory back beyond Kherson like all of it, then that precedent means Russia just gets bruised and beaten up and decides, "Okay, Ukraine too much trouble. We've also been humiliated, embarrassed by these goddamn Europeans and by these Ukrainians. We need to show that we're still top dog." They'll turn out and beat someone else up.
Jakub: Do you think there will be a quick and easy integration into the EU?
Anastasiia: Of course not. To begin with, because EU is an extremely, extremely bureaucratic organisation. It takes forever to pass anything, do anything. Of course, if we're talking about a country that is in the middle of war or has just won a war, which are the only two options I'm considering here, it's going to take a while. Maybe I'm too positive, but I think it's bound to happen because after all of these discussions about how the nature has to change.
Just frankly, after everything that has happened up to this moment and when we win this war, our cover letter for this application is going to be, "Hey, we just lost hundreds of thousands of people (which is a likely number) and they died. We join you guys and here we are literally going to war and winning it to be a part of the EU. That's why I would deserve to be there." I do not see a world where they say no.
Jakub: I don't want to be pessimistic, but I do a little bit. Here's what I mean. I think it's one thing to ask for aid and support as Ukraine does right now. I think the kind of framing, like you just said, "Look, we've paid such a dear price for this. We have sacrificed so much you owe us this," is something that is not quite as impactful for let's say -- and I don't want to pick on them -- but like the Dutch voters who are very pragmatic and will say, "Well look, we're happy to help but do we actually want to invite another, sorry, but headache from the East?"
Because they have Hungary, which they're in the process of kicking out. I think to Alex's point, offers them the opportunity to make decisions about how we also organise ourselves. It's the final step where they essentially give Ukraine a right to also influence European affairs. I think that's something that will be a harder sell. It will require very tactful diplomacy. Yes, great communications. Ukraine is fantastic at that, but that's not a given. I think that final step will be much trickier and Ukraine is going to need to be very savvy and build a lot of coalitions here within the EU and with different stakeholders across the continent.
Anastasiia: I guess that's a great way to wrap this up.
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Next week we've got a really special episode. As we speak with Radosław Sikorski, the Polish member of European Parliament, journalist and one of the most significant politicians working on policy in Eastern Europe over the past couple of decades. We spoke about his role as the architect of the Eastern Partnership, the EU’s reaction to Russia's full-scale invasion, and much more.
Jakub: In two weeks on Power Lines, we will be speaking to Helen Thompson, a Professor of Political Economy at the University of Cambridge to explore the impact of the war on global resources.
We’ll be focusing on energy in particular, to see how the current crisis impacts both geopolitics and the lives of ordinary people.
If you liked Power Lines, look up Message Herd wherever you are listening to this podcast for more of our original shows, and find us on our website at messageherd.com or on our Power Lines Twitter @PowerLinesPod, as well as Instagram, and Facebook by looking up @Message Heard.
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Anastasiia: Power Lines is a partnership between The Kyiv Independent and Message Heard. It was produced by Bea Duncan, Harry Stott, and Talia Augustidis. The executive producer is Sandra Ferrari. The theme music is by Tom Biddle and Alfie Godfrey.