2.2 • 5 Ratings
🗓️ 23 February 2024
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Europe Now brings you a special programme from Kyiv to mark the second anniversary of full-scale war in Ukraine. The fighting has killed and injured hundreds of thousands of people and left around a fifth of Ukrainian territory under Russian control, but this has not deterred Kyiv from seeking full membership of the European Union. In this first part of the show, we focus on Ukraine's reforms and its cultural heritage.
In December, Ukraine received a crucial signal from the EU, when the 27 member states agreed to start accession talks with Kyiv. And in February, a compromise was reached with Hungary to unblock a €50 billion financial support package for Ukraine. Throughout the war, and even before, the EU has been a crucial partner, providing at least €85 billion in aid to Ukraine.
In part one of this special programme, we visit Ukraine's premier innovation park, Unit City, where we meet Olha Stefanishyna, the country's deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration. She outlines the current state of play on Ukraine's EU reforms and tells us what she now expects from the European Commission in order to take things further.
We also tour the war-damaged Khanenko museum in Kyiv and discuss the impact of the war on Ukrainian culture with the country's most celebrated novelist, Andrey Kurkov. He describes how, despite the destruction of cultural heritage and all the horrors associated with that, the international visibility of Ukraine's culture has grown significantly.
In our motion design segment, Sophie Samaille recaps the various EU funding programmes that have been deployed in Ukraine.
Our reporter Luke Brown looks at EU-funded projects for Ukraine: from long-standing efforts to help "level up" Ukraine with EU Cohesion funds, to the more recent – and all the more urgent – efforts to help Ukraine rebuild homes and schools damaged by the Russian invasion, even as the war rages on.
Watch moreUkraine: A nation at war, yet firmly on the path to EU membership (part 2)
Show presented by Armen Georgian, produced by Johan Bodin, filmed on location by Johan Bodin and Stéphane Bodenne, with Luke Brown. Video editing: Gilles Terrie, Joël Procope, Aude Richelet. Editor-in-chief: Caroline de Camaret.
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the DG Regional and Urban Policy. Neither the European Union nor the DG Regional and Urban Policy can be held responsible for them.
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0:00.0 | I'm Hello and welcome to this special edition of Europe now. |
0:41.5 | I'm in Kiev on the second anniversary of the full-scale war in Ukraine, a war that has likely |
0:48.4 | killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of people and left about 18% of Ukrainian territory under Russian control. |
0:56.0 | And you can see some of the tributes to the fallen here. |
0:59.0 | Now, it's also the 10th anniversary of what Ukrainians call the revolution of dignity, |
1:05.0 | which happened right here on the Maidan. |
1:08.0 | It saw tragedy, but it also cemented Ukraine's pro-European direction, |
1:13.0 | which culminated in the European Union agreeing to start accession talks for Ukraine to join |
1:19.0 | the bloc two months ago. Throughout this war, the EU has been a key partner for Ukraine, |
1:24.9 | providing at least 85 billion euros in aid and enacting no fewer than |
1:30.3 | 12 sanctions packages on the Russian Federation. |
1:34.3 | But finding consensus inside the EU is becoming harder. |
1:39.3 | For months, European leaders have faced off with one EU colleague over Ukraine aid, Viktor Orban, |
1:46.4 | the Hungarian Prime Minister. He says the EU should focus on peace, not military aid. Orban blocked |
1:52.9 | the financial support to Ukraine at the December EU summit, but in February he backed down |
1:58.4 | after a deal was reached in which Hungarian money won't end up in Ukraine. |
2:03.2 | Kiev could receive the first tranche of the 50 billion euros in March. |
2:19.3 | My name is Konstantin Yiphtoshenko. I'm the managing partner in Unit City. |
2:21.3 | And Unit City is the largest innovation park in Eastern Europe, based in Kiev. |
2:26.3 | This is the place where Ukrainians and all the other worlds can collaborate in tech and creative industries. |
2:33.3 | You know, we've been traveling around the world, |
2:35.0 | and we've been assembling these pieces of how can Ukraine be supportive |
... |
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