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ind out our exclusive interview with Kurt Volker, a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and former special US envoy to Ukraine.
How do you see from here in Kyiv the perception of the world of the war in Ukraine changed during these six months and what global processes it launched?
It has really been a transformational period for the perceptions of Ukraine in the rest of the world. If you go back, say December and I happen to be in Brussels in December, there were people who would still talk about Ukraine as, oh, it’s a big challenge. They have a lot of corruption. They need to do a lot of reforms. Even as Russia was building up its military forces, it’s just seen as over there somehow and not adopting it as their own concern. But it’s complicated. And after Russia’s invasion, unprovoked, committing war crimes, killing civilians, everything that we’ve seen and the resolve and the determination of the Ukrainian people and their ability to fight, defend themselves, push the Russians back. This has changed perceptions of Ukraine completely. Europeans in their offices in Brussels and I was there in March, we’re talking just a few weeks after the war began. Now they’re wearing lapel pins with the Ukrainian flag. They have flags in their offices. They talk about Ukraine as part of a European family. They’ve seen we’ve seen the candidate status for Ukraine from European Union now. So instead of seeing Ukraine as a challenge and over there now people see Ukraine as a European democracy, which is fundamental, this means that Ukraine’s future as a part of Europe is now clear. Likewise, I think the United States has gone from seeing Ukraine as something that was just a little bit mysterious to something that people understand and say, no, this is a country, it’s a democracy. They’re trying to defend themselves. They need our help. And our help has been effective and welcomed. And that has created a very different perception.
