Last week I had an encouraging exchange with what will be the generation of young Ukrainian people, from The National Law University, Kharkiv. They are the ones who will be in post when the inevitable peace comes, and be the ones who carry forward their country’s practical working relations with the European Union (EU). The process of accession will be long and must rest on an understanding of how the EU has developed and works.
Picking up pre-war links
I had visited Ukraine before the war both as an election observer for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE/ODIHR), and also to set up links between British and Ukrainian universities. In happier times I have been a guest lecturer at the Taras Schevchenko University, Kyiv.
I was responding to a request to talk about my own experience as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) and a former Vice-President of the External Economic Affairs Committee, which had dealt with several accession issues, including those of Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary; countries, which were transitioning from totalitarian systems, both political and economic.
We also talked about Brexit and the fact other countries didn’t leave
Additionally, I was asked about my own country’s disastrous “Brexit”, based on my book.
I avoided the temptation to moan about the post political and economic crisis in Brexitland, but reminded the audience that the confident predictions that other EU members would follow to the exit had not happened. On the contrary, Britain’s post Brexit slump had the opposite effect, as all but the die-hard extreme nationalists had trimmed their ambitions from exit to Euro-skepticism.
The British Labour government has found that in an increasingly polarized world, there’s no safe middle-of-road between the White House and the Kremlin. There’s a grim consistency in Putin’s hostility, which can be taken into account; whereas Trump’s increasingly erratic actions make the USA an unpredictable ally, as the people of the Ukraine experience on a daily basis.
An air-raid siren during the Q&A session
The students were alert, well informed, with an impressively high command of English. Most interesting, as usual, was the Q&A session.
The campus lies less than thirty miles from the Russian border. During the zoom, an air-raid siren went off and the moderators announced that anyone who wished to take shelter should leave. Apparently no-one did; more a testimony to the bravery and thirst for intellectual exchange of the students, rather than a tribute to my own words.
There is a store of fortitude, determination and resistance in the Ukraine similar to that displayed by the anti-Nazi resistance in World War Two, which will serve the people well in the peace they deserve.
Slava Ukraini
First published on Michael Hindley’s Substack page ‘The readiness is all’
