June 28, 2022 • 28 mins
Inna Sovsun is currently a Member of Parliament in Ukraine. Inna is the youngest women to be in her position. Join your host James Brown as they chat about the current invasion, history, political science and what freedom means to the Ukrainian people.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
A few days after Russia invaded Ukraine. I started reaching
out to NGOs and reporters to see if I could
find a way to plug in and be helpful, but
unfortunately I wasn't able to figure anything out. I had
heard about the International Legion of Defense on Twitter, so
I called the Ukrainian embassy to inquire, but at that
(00:25):
stage they weren't accepting anyone without military training. So I
booked a flight to Warsaw, rented a car, and drove
to the Poland Ukraine border with the intention of driving
refugees wherever they needed to go. I was driving down
a narrow road that lines the border close to a
very small town called doro Husk when I saw a
(00:47):
woman and her two young girls walking out of the forest.
I stopped and typed into Google Translator. Do you need
a ride? She nodded yes and they hopped in. As
we had coach doors. I noticed a policeman standing in
front of the driveway. I stopped and said, I've got refugees,
and he directed me to accomp which was still being
(01:09):
set up at the such A Dulski Palace, which was
a baroque palace built by the such A Dulski family
in the eighteenth century. I pulled up on a volunteer
translator greeted us and eventually told me to take the
refugees to get Dansk. I quickly pulled up Get Dance
on my phone and saw it was about an eight
or nine hour drive. The transitor told me, if you
(01:33):
can't make it tonight, go on Twitter and find someone
in Warsaw, which is about halfway to pick them up.
I couldn't help but feel that it was my responsibility
to make sure they made it to Gdansk, So off
we went. Our communication was limited to using Google Translator,
and basically all I found out was that her husband
(01:54):
was fighting, they had to evacuate their house because of shelling,
and the address so I was taking them to Your
Good Dance was actually a train station. We eventually made
it there, and just as I stepped out of my car,
a man started hugging me. It was obvious he had
been waiting for us. He had tears in his eyes,
(02:16):
he was so grateful. It was a very powerful moment.
We had goodbye to that family and got back in
my car and started driving back towards Warsaw along the way.
I've been posting images and videos, and my dear friend
Katrina decided to post a video about the work I
was doing. It was through her video that I connected
(02:38):
with a small Polish foundation called Pulskafala in a city
on the west side of Poland called Falbridge. They had
been busy finding accommodation for refugees and we decided to
coordinate efforts and we as awareness and support from what
we were doing. Through the help of the mayor, we
had immediate access to social security benefits for all refugees
(03:00):
and we have now successfully hirst unsupported over thirty families.
Some women now I have jobs. We organized chemotherapy for
one woman who wasn't able to continue treatment in Ukraine.
Kids have found schools and one ended up with a
scholarship from the local ice hockey team. The Ukrainian people
(03:20):
I met left the lasting impression on me. They fight
for freedom, for their country and for their children. This
is the unimaginable. I'm your host a musician James Brown.
This episode features a member of parliament in Ukraine who
represents the Liberal Democratic party called Voice, Nina Safson. Hello, everyone,
(03:55):
my name is Ina Sosun. I'm a member of Balament
in Ukraine. I'm thirty seven and I've been serving in
the parliament for two and a half years now, and
we're representing an opposition political party. It's called the Holess
which is translated as a Voice into English, and it's
a liberal political party here in Ukraine. We do have
(04:17):
a small faction in the parliament, so it's not very big,
but well, we hope to make it bigger. But that
is yet another story to tell. But shortly about my background. So,
I was born and raised in Harkiv, which is the
second biggest city in Ukraine. It's on the east. It's
actually forty kilometers from the Russian Boredom. It has been
(04:40):
in the news recently a lot because it has been
bombarded by the Russians so heavily. And I was growing
up in the city which is mainly Russian speaking city.
To Harki is a Russian speaking city, but I was
growing up in a family where we spoke Ukrainian. So
I think that was the first thing which got me
into social science answers and the politics after all, because
(05:02):
I was trying to figure out how this language issue
can turn into divisive issue and how that can be
you know because I could feel it very early in
my in my life. How me being a Ukraine as
speaker was, you know, a factor of discrimination. So whenever
ever anyone is saying that Russian language is discriminated in Ukraine, well,
(05:23):
I can tell you so many stories from my from
my kindergarten to school where I was laughed at because
I was a Ukraine and speaking in hart Care. After
after graduation from high school, I went to keep to
study in the university it was. It's called Giving Hill Academy.
It's a relatively small university, but it was important for
(05:43):
me to get into that university because it was one
of a very few universities back in two thousand one
where you could get into without any corruption, because that
was a huge issue at that time. We did get
that fixed later, but but in two thousand one it
was a huge issue. I corrupt at the university admission.
So I was very proud to get into Kie Mohila.
(06:04):
I was like, oh, I was so good and so happy.
And I studied political science and then I after graduating
from Kiev Mohila, I applied to study abroad and I
did my master's in Sweden in the Lunda University. I
studied there for a year. I was thinking about continue
some pH d studies abroad or something, but I decided
(06:27):
to go back to Ukraine because I was thinking that
how I should fight for my country and I should
you know, that's where my my homies, that's where my
family is, that's the society I understand, and well, for
many many reasons, I came back. I started working for
an non governmental organization doing projects mainly in educational policy.
(06:52):
So we were actually at that time Ukraine was making
this big reform of changing the university admission system and
we were kind of monitoring that and that was my
job in that organization, and that is how I got
into education policy. And also around that time I also
started teaching in the university in Gamo Hilla Academy. I
(07:14):
was teaching still am teaching in the political science department,
and from that I left that organization, but I started
my own think tank called Sidos, and our idea was
that we wanted I think ten dedicated to specific areas
which are under researched then understudied in the public sphere
(07:36):
in Ukraine, one of them being education policy, another was
migration policy and urban issues. Those were issues which were
under research, but we really wanted to focus on those,
and from there being ahead of the think tank, we
were heavily involved in developing new legislation for high education
in Ukraine. And because of that, after two thousand fourteen,
(07:59):
when we had the Revolution of Dignity my done. The
new Minister of Education wasn't appointed. Who was the rector
of the university which I graduated from and in which
I was studying, and he know in my expertise in
in education policy and he invited me to join his
team as the first deputy Minister of Education. So first
deputy ministry is the like the second position in the
(08:21):
ministerial hierarchy. So whenever the ministry is out on vocation
and business trip or anything like that, like the first
eputeo minister is the acting minister. So that was March
two thousand fourteen, right eight years ago, March two thousand fourteen.
You can imagine what time it was, because that was
right after the revolution Russia and access Crimea, the war
(08:42):
Indoon buses studying and I'm there. I was twenty nine
when I was appointed. There were many controversies about my appointment.
I surely got all those you know, people who were
saying like, oh she's too young, Oh she's still in experience.
Oh she must be the lover of the minister, and
that is why she got appointed. You know, we still
get those sexist comments in the Ukrainian society. I believe
(09:04):
in in the American society as well, because at the
same time, people of my age but who were males
were not accused of being you know, in personal relations
with the minister, but females always got those accusations here
in Ukraine. So um, but I got appointed and I
was working too it a half years so the first
Deputy Minister of Education until the change of government. Well
(09:24):
I don't think I did enough, but I was working
on high education issues. That was my my main domain
that I was responsible for. We did some good stuff
there that I'm still proud of what we did in
the ministry. And after that, after the change in in
ministerial leadership because of the government change, I went to
work at a private university called Keep School of Economics
(09:49):
as the vice president and I launched my own program,
which is called Masters in Public Policy and Governance to
prepare people to solve the country in public policies. Fidos. Yeah,
it's it's a very good program. I still teach there,
so I now teaching to universities working there. I applied
to the full Break program and I went to the
(10:11):
States to UC Berkeley as a full Bridge scholar, and
I spent a year, well nine months in California, which
was fun, super fun. I missed those times now and
literally like I came back in the night from Friday
to Saturday, and on Monday, newly elected presidents of lin
(10:33):
Ski dissolved the parliament and appointed new elections. And less
than a week after I was appointed, UH team that
was gathering new political party to make to run for elections,
they contact me inside like you know what we want
to run with us and so on, and then so
I got on the party list. So I was elected
(10:54):
on the party list and not on the constituency level.
We do have a different system here and you crane
compared to what you have in the US, because in Ukraine,
half of them PSA elected on a party list and
half of them PSA elected on single constituencies. So I
was elected on the party list again with the whole
of party. I served for a nine or ten months
(11:19):
in the education Committee, which made sounds given my background.
But then I switched, which is something I didn't expect myself.
But I switched to Energy Committee, which was a big
change for myself. But it doesn't mean I gave up
education policy. I rather added energy to my to my portfolio,
or to speak. So I'm an open feminist. That's where
(11:41):
I call it. Here. I am proud to have been
called the most friendly and p by the LGBTQ community.
I got a sign that says, though I'm in favor
of rather radical reforms in education as well. That was
one of the issues when I was working in the
ministry because educational community, academic community overall is rather conservative everywhere,
(12:03):
I believe, not particularly here in Ukraine. I would say
that twenty percent of the of the academic community in
Ukraine loved me. They said, like, oh my god, finally
someone is saying what we all were waiting to say,
that it was the most progressive part of the academic community.
And then eight percent hated me, but so badly, like
like so very badly, and so so I do believe
(12:24):
that my views are radical in terms of I want
radical change. I understand they're often not popular, but I
also understand that if we wait too long, it just
makes no sense. We do have you know, people I
live in Ukraine because they're not happy with the level
of education, with with many other things. So yeah, I'm
kind of radical in that sense. In terms of energy,
(12:45):
I concentrated on on several issues, the support for green
energy here in Ukraine, UM for renewables which is a
contactic issue here but still UM and energy efficiency and
energy say evenings again a huge issue for Ukrainian economy
were extremely inefficient in terms of energy use, which again
(13:06):
will be the big problem for us after the victory,
which will definitely get more attention into that issue. That
was also that was about politics. I um, yeah, I
have a son, his nine, his name is Martin. I'm
divorced with his dad, but we are on good terms
(13:27):
and and and all. Uh. And I have a boyfriend
who is with the army right now, which I knew
he would rejoin because he served in the army before,
so I knew that he would go back to the
army and all. He's in the arm in up right now,
and from time to time I'm getting messages from him
saying that I'm alive, which is as good as it
(13:48):
gets here in Ukraine right now? How is it to
be not the most popular MP? Like, how does that
affect you? And what keeps you motivated to keep going?
(14:09):
It's tough. I wouldn't say it's easier, right, and it's
always easier to just try to be liked by by
the majority. But I know that I think I have
this in my mind. I always have this final goal
like what am I doing that for? And I'm doing
everything for my son to have a better life here
then I'm here heaven and that is crucially important and
(14:31):
that is my like like what you call it? How
I measure things? So I do? And that is probably
that is the problem of our political party overall. That's
why we have a rather low level of support. We
do recognize that, but that is because it's not just me,
it's the whole party. We are saying that this is
the right thing to do, even if it doesn't feel
like this. This is the right thing to do right now,
(14:53):
because then in five years we shall get a better society.
But in Ukraine, I think everywhere in Ukraine as well,
is this populist trend that has been you know, sweeping
the political elites all over all over the world. It
is here in Ukraine as well. In Ukraine has always
been trying to find this let's find the middle ground
(15:14):
so that these people are happened. These people are happen,
we shall just keep everything quiet and and that doesn't work.
That is why we are not. Like economically speaking, we
are not Poland right now. Right if we did more
radical reforms twenty years ago, as Poland did, we would
have been much better economically. So I I do have
(15:34):
an argument which is scientifically based that what I'm suggesting
being in education and energy, in economics, whatever, it has
always scientifically proven, and it is always based on the
experience of other countries. Like I don't like the idea.
Like in Ukraine, we often hear that, oh, we have to,
you know, to think about the Ukrainian context, it's so
(15:54):
specific and so on and so forth, and then we
just remained within this context for years without many changes
that that I wanted to see. And then I'm also
seeing many people in Ukraine. Well before the war, Let's
let's put it this way, many people were not happy
with the level of progress here in Ukraine and they
(16:15):
were just leaving. Well, many scientists were leaving, which is
a pity. Many where would they go? Uh, well, it depends,
but many of them would go to the US, many
of them would go to the Western Europe. But I know,
like like many people, like I did my masters in
Europe and I came back. Many of my of my
classmates in the university did the same, and and almost
(16:38):
none of them came back because they're seeing a different
level of life in other countries, opportunities and so on.
So my approaches that we have to create new opportunities
here in Ukraine, and we have to learn to prioritize.
And I think that is again another problem, and the
political sphere here in Ukraine. Gosh, I haven't been speaking
about that for for three weeks because we were only
(16:59):
talking about now we have to think back. But I
think this is a problem, like when we do not prioritize,
we are trying to keep everyone like Mediocri really happy,
and we don't see this big rise in anisphere like
any like. So so I was always in favor of off,
let's do something more radical, let's do something more tough.
(17:20):
It's going to be unpopular. I'll give you one example. Uh,
it's it's it's a. It's still it remains a controversial
issue in Ukraine and academia. But when I was serving
in the ministry in Ukraine, and that's a completely different
system than the American one. But in Ukraine, like your
career is marked by several like status is let's put
(17:41):
it this way, it's closer to the German system, and
they're what based on the state decided criteria. But I'm
not gonna go into details. But what I stated is that, uh,
in order to progress in your career, you need to
have Previously, they had like different stup criteria, we didn't
really say much about how well you are doing as
(18:03):
an academic. But I changed that to two simple ones,
first being that you need to have a peer review
articles published in the internationally recognized journals, which was not
the case in Ukraine. You could have published here in
a local rubbish paper and no one cared about that.
And you should speak English. And and that made perfect
(18:28):
sense to me, because you cannot be teaching in the
university in you know, in the twenty first century without
having at least the basic knowledge of English, because if
you don't speak English, that means you don't have access
to the most recent research and then like what you're
teaching is just making no sense. I mean, there can
be some some exemptions like I don't know, you're teaching
(18:49):
Ukrainian language and literature or whatever, but for the majority,
like you kind of teaching physics or political science for
that matter, if you don't speak English. So so that
was my position. We did adopt this um as legislation. Yeah,
and um we actually had a rapid growing of of
different courses for the for the professors in the university
(19:11):
where universities realized that this is the policy right now,
we need to make sure that our professors are able
to you know, to to proceed in their career, and
they started teaching their professors English, which I thought was great,
you know. And then uh, and then the next minister
came and she canceled that, and I was I was like,
I was literally because it was very unpopular because the
(19:36):
majority didn't want that. And I am absolutely sure that
if she didn't change that back in two thousand, seven seventeen,
in two thousand seventeen, five years ago, within five years,
we would have had a completely different academic sphere here
in Ukraine. But because that was canceled, now people got
(19:57):
stuck and they got stuck in the all this in
the model, like you know, modeling through We're we're doing okay,
we're not bad, We're not good, but you know, we
could have gotten a completely different results of five years.
In five years that I'm getting, I'm getting really emotional
when I speak about that. I think, like canceling, that
was a stupid move, and I yeah, but that is
the kind of approach that I take. I do like
(20:19):
things more radical because I think that taken the middle ground,
like in the situation that we are in, it can
work for stable democracy with properly functional market economy, but
not for a situation that Ukraine is in, which needs
you know, rapid growth. So I lost my daughter almost
four years ago and the pain of that was completely
(20:41):
life changing. And with that, I can't help but think
about how this invasion is forcing families to endure a
level of pain and suffering that is probably unimaginable for
most people. But what's the what's the general feeling there?
How does this affect you as somebody that's know, a
politician or someone that's you know that loves your country
(21:04):
and and wants to change it for good. First of all,
I'm sorry to hear about your story. And yes, I
can't imagine the level of pain people are going through.
I was reading, and the stories of children suffering do
touch me most. It's like I was reading a story
(21:24):
in Mariupo actually where six or seven year old girl
died from dehydration, and that like that story, when I
read it, it kept me kept me awake for for
a couple of nights. I couldn't sleep, just because I
was trying to imagine that poor mother sitting in a
bunker with your with your child, keeping her on your
(21:46):
arms and seeing her diet. It's like and it's it's
it's terrible. Probably, yeah, I was trying to grasp that,
but I just tried to run away from those sorts
of because even thinking about that is is is painful.
The mother died herself as well, by the way, this
is what Putin is doing, and this is what the
(22:07):
world needs to know, and the world kind of not
react that. However, you felt about the global response to
the war, I think the first the first week or
so of war, I got so irritated by a tweet
or video by Secretary of State Lincoln. Again, we're grateful
for the support to again in and all, but the
video stated like Ukrainians are so inspiring, I'm so inspired
(22:30):
by them, and I felt like this immense rage, like
I don't want to be inspiring. I want to be inspiring,
you know, to other people. But sorry, I want to
be alive, and I want my child to be alive,
and I want to be able to go to my
home and to take my son home and to put
him to bed in the evening and you know, do
the stuff that we used to do. So so I
(22:51):
am extremely angered by by this lack of reaction, and
I do think that there is there are many miscalculations
in the Western reaction because what they do not understand
probably and probably something that we are seeing much better
from Ukraine from Ukraine here is that Russia is a
very difficult country. We know that Ukraine has had tense
(23:13):
relations with Russia for centuries, so this doesn't start right
now like it's complicated for centuries. That is probably what
the world doesn't know that much about. They were trying
to ban our language, they were trying to subjugate the people,
They were trying to send some of the people to
you know, to distant parts of Russia. They were killing
our like intellectuals, writers, and so when they killed the
(23:37):
ten million Ukrainians and what we call all of them war,
which is the Great Famine into thirty three. So this
is at least to say, a complicated country. Still not
recognized as a genocide by the majority of countries, by
the way, So so we know that better that this
whole country is to a very big extent screwed up.
I think that many on the West are scared to
(23:59):
say this, that this can sound discriminatory or whatever, but
it's the whole country that is screwed up, like literally
that no matter what you think that that I'm being
too harsh or anything. Well, maybe the right ten thousand
people who are okay, the majority of them have left
Russia by now. But other than that, the majority of
people are just just crazy and they and the whole
(24:21):
like political organization of Russia, it has never been a
democratic state. It has never even attempted to be a
democratic state. It never like the idea of respect to
human dignity was never part of their internal ideology as
a nation. That is something that is so different from Ukraine.
And this is like so different from all this, like
(24:43):
what they're saying in the like the Russian literature and
so on, that is completely different from the Russian culture
everyday culture, and that is again harsh to accept. But
that is the biggest difference between Russians and Ukrainians is
that in Ukrainian political culture. And I have many issues
with your and political culture, corruption being part of that.
I do recognize it. But for us, this idea of
(25:05):
freedom is so so internally important. Like in the history,
we did have those period of Cossacks. I think many
people think they're Russian, but they're actually Ukrainian Cossacks who
were fighting basically against everyone. Then we did have a
big anarchist anarchist anarchist movement in the central Ukraine, and
(25:27):
that is again so anarchism is not very good in
terms of state building, but that is just just to
show you to what extent this society is built, like
horizontal and not vertical, and to what extent this idea
of defending freedom is so much is a part of
the culture. And that is why here in Ukraine we
have seen people who have seen Russian soldiers and they're
(25:50):
not running away, but they're actually taken them with whatever
they have, like like a lot of cocktails, bare hands, whatever.
This is something that Russians would never do. And there
is another like example, I don't know, I'm leaning away
a little bit. Well, get back to what I went
to say. But in Ukraine, we did have two histories
(26:12):
of what we call my dance, like large revolutions. So
we stood up to the rulers that we didn't like,
we went to the protest that what part was part
of both into thousand four into thousandto teen fourteen. In Ukraine,
when the police becomes too aggressive and starts grabbing people
on the on the realist, on the streets, everybody around
(26:33):
starts fighting back and trying to take those people from
the police. And then look at the the protest protest
actions by Russians. They see police taking a person and
at best they just filming it on their phone. Not
a single person is trying to you know, to you know,
to save the person being taken by the police. This
(26:54):
is so much different like Ukraine. I think that's important
for the world to understand. It was is that we
are not similar in so many ways. And this, this
internal idea of freedom is so important to us. And
that is why we we are expecting the world to
see that, and the world that is claiming to respect
freedom to recognize that right now, what we are fighting
(27:16):
for is exactly this idea of freedom for us are
I admire in his passion for history and science and
how she uses that knowledge to implement change In Ukraine.
(27:38):
What's going on there is Unimaginablelike Ina, I hope the
rest of the world increases their support to protect Ukraine's freedom.
Slava Krania, You've just listened to the unimaginable. I'm your host,
James Brown. Until next time, they are an Imagina
A few days after Russia invaded Ukraine. I started reaching
out to NGOs and reporters to see if I could
find a way to plug in and be helpful, but
unfortunately I wasn't able to figure anything out. I had
heard about the International Legion of Defense on Twitter, so
I called the Ukrainian embassy to inquire, but at that
(00:25):
stage they weren't accepting anyone without military training. So I
booked a flight to Warsaw, rented a car, and drove
to the Poland Ukraine border with the intention of driving
refugees wherever they needed to go. I was driving down
a narrow road that lines the border close to a
very small town called doro Husk when I saw a
(00:47):
woman and her two young girls walking out of the forest.
I stopped and typed into Google Translator. Do you need
a ride? She nodded yes and they hopped in. As
we had coach doors. I noticed a policeman standing in
front of the driveway. I stopped and said, I've got refugees,
and he directed me to accomp which was still being
(01:09):
set up at the such A Dulski Palace, which was
a baroque palace built by the such A Dulski family
in the eighteenth century. I pulled up on a volunteer
translator greeted us and eventually told me to take the
refugees to get Dansk. I quickly pulled up Get Dance
on my phone and saw it was about an eight
or nine hour drive. The transitor told me, if you
(01:33):
can't make it tonight, go on Twitter and find someone
in Warsaw, which is about halfway to pick them up.
I couldn't help but feel that it was my responsibility
to make sure they made it to Gdansk, So off
we went. Our communication was limited to using Google Translator,
and basically all I found out was that her husband
(01:54):
was fighting, they had to evacuate their house because of shelling,
and the address so I was taking them to Your
Good Dance was actually a train station. We eventually made
it there, and just as I stepped out of my car,
a man started hugging me. It was obvious he had
been waiting for us. He had tears in his eyes,
(02:16):
he was so grateful. It was a very powerful moment.
We had goodbye to that family and got back in
my car and started driving back towards Warsaw along the way.
I've been posting images and videos, and my dear friend
Katrina decided to post a video about the work I
was doing. It was through her video that I connected
(02:38):
with a small Polish foundation called Pulskafala in a city
on the west side of Poland called Falbridge. They had
been busy finding accommodation for refugees and we decided to
coordinate efforts and we as awareness and support from what
we were doing. Through the help of the mayor, we
had immediate access to social security benefits for all refugees
(03:00):
and we have now successfully hirst unsupported over thirty families.
Some women now I have jobs. We organized chemotherapy for
one woman who wasn't able to continue treatment in Ukraine.
Kids have found schools and one ended up with a
scholarship from the local ice hockey team. The Ukrainian people
(03:20):
I met left the lasting impression on me. They fight
for freedom, for their country and for their children. This
is the unimaginable. I'm your host a musician James Brown.
This episode features a member of parliament in Ukraine who
represents the Liberal Democratic party called Voice, Nina Safson. Hello, everyone,
(03:55):
my name is Ina Sosun. I'm a member of Balament
in Ukraine. I'm thirty seven and I've been serving in
the parliament for two and a half years now, and
we're representing an opposition political party. It's called the Holess
which is translated as a Voice into English, and it's
a liberal political party here in Ukraine. We do have
(04:17):
a small faction in the parliament, so it's not very big,
but well, we hope to make it bigger. But that
is yet another story to tell. But shortly about my background. So,
I was born and raised in Harkiv, which is the
second biggest city in Ukraine. It's on the east. It's
actually forty kilometers from the Russian Boredom. It has been
(04:40):
in the news recently a lot because it has been
bombarded by the Russians so heavily. And I was growing
up in the city which is mainly Russian speaking city.
To Harki is a Russian speaking city, but I was
growing up in a family where we spoke Ukrainian. So
I think that was the first thing which got me
into social science answers and the politics after all, because
(05:02):
I was trying to figure out how this language issue
can turn into divisive issue and how that can be
you know because I could feel it very early in
my in my life. How me being a Ukraine as
speaker was, you know, a factor of discrimination. So whenever
ever anyone is saying that Russian language is discriminated in Ukraine, well,
(05:23):
I can tell you so many stories from my from
my kindergarten to school where I was laughed at because
I was a Ukraine and speaking in hart Care. After
after graduation from high school, I went to keep to
study in the university it was. It's called Giving Hill Academy.
It's a relatively small university, but it was important for
(05:43):
me to get into that university because it was one
of a very few universities back in two thousand one
where you could get into without any corruption, because that
was a huge issue at that time. We did get
that fixed later, but but in two thousand one it
was a huge issue. I corrupt at the university admission.
So I was very proud to get into Kie Mohila.
(06:04):
I was like, oh, I was so good and so happy.
And I studied political science and then I after graduating
from Kiev Mohila, I applied to study abroad and I
did my master's in Sweden in the Lunda University. I
studied there for a year. I was thinking about continue
some pH d studies abroad or something, but I decided
(06:27):
to go back to Ukraine because I was thinking that
how I should fight for my country and I should
you know, that's where my my homies, that's where my
family is, that's the society I understand, and well, for
many many reasons, I came back. I started working for
an non governmental organization doing projects mainly in educational policy.
(06:52):
So we were actually at that time Ukraine was making
this big reform of changing the university admission system and
we were kind of monitoring that and that was my
job in that organization, and that is how I got
into education policy. And also around that time I also
started teaching in the university in Gamo Hilla Academy. I
(07:14):
was teaching still am teaching in the political science department,
and from that I left that organization, but I started
my own think tank called Sidos, and our idea was
that we wanted I think ten dedicated to specific areas
which are under researched then understudied in the public sphere
(07:36):
in Ukraine, one of them being education policy, another was
migration policy and urban issues. Those were issues which were
under research, but we really wanted to focus on those,
and from there being ahead of the think tank, we
were heavily involved in developing new legislation for high education
in Ukraine. And because of that, after two thousand fourteen,
(07:59):
when we had the Revolution of Dignity my done. The
new Minister of Education wasn't appointed. Who was the rector
of the university which I graduated from and in which
I was studying, and he know in my expertise in
in education policy and he invited me to join his
team as the first deputy Minister of Education. So first
deputy ministry is the like the second position in the
(08:21):
ministerial hierarchy. So whenever the ministry is out on vocation
and business trip or anything like that, like the first
eputeo minister is the acting minister. So that was March
two thousand fourteen, right eight years ago, March two thousand fourteen.
You can imagine what time it was, because that was
right after the revolution Russia and access Crimea, the war
(08:42):
Indoon buses studying and I'm there. I was twenty nine
when I was appointed. There were many controversies about my appointment.
I surely got all those you know, people who were
saying like, oh she's too young, Oh she's still in experience.
Oh she must be the lover of the minister, and
that is why she got appointed. You know, we still
get those sexist comments in the Ukrainian society. I believe
(09:04):
in in the American society as well, because at the
same time, people of my age but who were males
were not accused of being you know, in personal relations
with the minister, but females always got those accusations here
in Ukraine. So um, but I got appointed and I
was working too it a half years so the first
Deputy Minister of Education until the change of government. Well
(09:24):
I don't think I did enough, but I was working
on high education issues. That was my my main domain
that I was responsible for. We did some good stuff
there that I'm still proud of what we did in
the ministry. And after that, after the change in in
ministerial leadership because of the government change, I went to
work at a private university called Keep School of Economics
(09:49):
as the vice president and I launched my own program,
which is called Masters in Public Policy and Governance to
prepare people to solve the country in public policies. Fidos. Yeah,
it's it's a very good program. I still teach there,
so I now teaching to universities working there. I applied
to the full Break program and I went to the
(10:11):
States to UC Berkeley as a full Bridge scholar, and
I spent a year, well nine months in California, which
was fun, super fun. I missed those times now and
literally like I came back in the night from Friday
to Saturday, and on Monday, newly elected presidents of lin
(10:33):
Ski dissolved the parliament and appointed new elections. And less
than a week after I was appointed, UH team that
was gathering new political party to make to run for elections,
they contact me inside like you know what we want
to run with us and so on, and then so
I got on the party list. So I was elected
(10:54):
on the party list and not on the constituency level.
We do have a different system here and you crane
compared to what you have in the US, because in Ukraine,
half of them PSA elected on a party list and
half of them PSA elected on single constituencies. So I
was elected on the party list again with the whole
of party. I served for a nine or ten months
(11:19):
in the education Committee, which made sounds given my background.
But then I switched, which is something I didn't expect myself.
But I switched to Energy Committee, which was a big
change for myself. But it doesn't mean I gave up
education policy. I rather added energy to my to my portfolio,
or to speak. So I'm an open feminist. That's where
(11:41):
I call it. Here. I am proud to have been
called the most friendly and p by the LGBTQ community.
I got a sign that says, though I'm in favor
of rather radical reforms in education as well. That was
one of the issues when I was working in the
ministry because educational community, academic community overall is rather conservative everywhere,
(12:03):
I believe, not particularly here in Ukraine. I would say
that twenty percent of the of the academic community in
Ukraine loved me. They said, like, oh my god, finally
someone is saying what we all were waiting to say,
that it was the most progressive part of the academic community.
And then eight percent hated me, but so badly, like
like so very badly, and so so I do believe
(12:24):
that my views are radical in terms of I want
radical change. I understand they're often not popular, but I
also understand that if we wait too long, it just
makes no sense. We do have you know, people I
live in Ukraine because they're not happy with the level
of education, with with many other things. So yeah, I'm
kind of radical in that sense. In terms of energy,
(12:45):
I concentrated on on several issues, the support for green
energy here in Ukraine, UM for renewables which is a
contactic issue here but still UM and energy efficiency and
energy say evenings again a huge issue for Ukrainian economy
were extremely inefficient in terms of energy use, which again
(13:06):
will be the big problem for us after the victory,
which will definitely get more attention into that issue. That
was also that was about politics. I um, yeah, I
have a son, his nine, his name is Martin. I'm
divorced with his dad, but we are on good terms
(13:27):
and and and all. Uh. And I have a boyfriend
who is with the army right now, which I knew
he would rejoin because he served in the army before,
so I knew that he would go back to the
army and all. He's in the arm in up right now,
and from time to time I'm getting messages from him
saying that I'm alive, which is as good as it
(13:48):
gets here in Ukraine right now? How is it to
be not the most popular MP? Like, how does that
affect you? And what keeps you motivated to keep going?
(14:09):
It's tough. I wouldn't say it's easier, right, and it's
always easier to just try to be liked by by
the majority. But I know that I think I have
this in my mind. I always have this final goal
like what am I doing that for? And I'm doing
everything for my son to have a better life here
then I'm here heaven and that is crucially important and
(14:31):
that is my like like what you call it? How
I measure things? So I do? And that is probably
that is the problem of our political party overall. That's
why we have a rather low level of support. We
do recognize that, but that is because it's not just me,
it's the whole party. We are saying that this is
the right thing to do, even if it doesn't feel
like this. This is the right thing to do right now,
(14:53):
because then in five years we shall get a better society.
But in Ukraine, I think everywhere in Ukraine as well,
is this populist trend that has been you know, sweeping
the political elites all over all over the world. It
is here in Ukraine as well. In Ukraine has always
been trying to find this let's find the middle ground
(15:14):
so that these people are happened. These people are happen,
we shall just keep everything quiet and and that doesn't work.
That is why we are not. Like economically speaking, we
are not Poland right now. Right if we did more
radical reforms twenty years ago, as Poland did, we would
have been much better economically. So I I do have
(15:34):
an argument which is scientifically based that what I'm suggesting
being in education and energy, in economics, whatever, it has
always scientifically proven, and it is always based on the
experience of other countries. Like I don't like the idea.
Like in Ukraine, we often hear that, oh, we have to,
you know, to think about the Ukrainian context, it's so
(15:54):
specific and so on and so forth, and then we
just remained within this context for years without many changes
that that I wanted to see. And then I'm also
seeing many people in Ukraine. Well before the war, Let's
let's put it this way, many people were not happy
with the level of progress here in Ukraine and they
(16:15):
were just leaving. Well, many scientists were leaving, which is
a pity. Many where would they go? Uh, well, it depends,
but many of them would go to the US, many
of them would go to the Western Europe. But I know,
like like many people, like I did my masters in
Europe and I came back. Many of my of my
classmates in the university did the same, and and almost
(16:38):
none of them came back because they're seeing a different
level of life in other countries, opportunities and so on.
So my approaches that we have to create new opportunities
here in Ukraine, and we have to learn to prioritize.
And I think that is again another problem, and the
political sphere here in Ukraine. Gosh, I haven't been speaking
about that for for three weeks because we were only
(16:59):
talking about now we have to think back. But I
think this is a problem, like when we do not prioritize,
we are trying to keep everyone like Mediocri really happy,
and we don't see this big rise in anisphere like
any like. So so I was always in favor of off,
let's do something more radical, let's do something more tough.
(17:20):
It's going to be unpopular. I'll give you one example. Uh,
it's it's it's a. It's still it remains a controversial
issue in Ukraine and academia. But when I was serving
in the ministry in Ukraine, and that's a completely different
system than the American one. But in Ukraine, like your
career is marked by several like status is let's put
(17:41):
it this way, it's closer to the German system, and
they're what based on the state decided criteria. But I'm
not gonna go into details. But what I stated is that, uh,
in order to progress in your career, you need to
have Previously, they had like different stup criteria, we didn't
really say much about how well you are doing as
(18:03):
an academic. But I changed that to two simple ones,
first being that you need to have a peer review
articles published in the internationally recognized journals, which was not
the case in Ukraine. You could have published here in
a local rubbish paper and no one cared about that.
And you should speak English. And and that made perfect
(18:28):
sense to me, because you cannot be teaching in the
university in you know, in the twenty first century without
having at least the basic knowledge of English, because if
you don't speak English, that means you don't have access
to the most recent research and then like what you're
teaching is just making no sense. I mean, there can
be some some exemptions like I don't know, you're teaching
(18:49):
Ukrainian language and literature or whatever, but for the majority,
like you kind of teaching physics or political science for
that matter, if you don't speak English. So so that
was my position. We did adopt this um as legislation. Yeah,
and um we actually had a rapid growing of of
different courses for the for the professors in the university
(19:11):
where universities realized that this is the policy right now,
we need to make sure that our professors are able
to you know, to to proceed in their career, and
they started teaching their professors English, which I thought was great,
you know. And then uh, and then the next minister
came and she canceled that, and I was I was like,
I was literally because it was very unpopular because the
(19:36):
majority didn't want that. And I am absolutely sure that
if she didn't change that back in two thousand, seven seventeen,
in two thousand seventeen, five years ago, within five years,
we would have had a completely different academic sphere here
in Ukraine. But because that was canceled, now people got
(19:57):
stuck and they got stuck in the all this in
the model, like you know, modeling through We're we're doing okay,
we're not bad, We're not good, but you know, we
could have gotten a completely different results of five years.
In five years that I'm getting, I'm getting really emotional
when I speak about that. I think, like canceling, that
was a stupid move, and I yeah, but that is
the kind of approach that I take. I do like
(20:19):
things more radical because I think that taken the middle ground,
like in the situation that we are in, it can
work for stable democracy with properly functional market economy, but
not for a situation that Ukraine is in, which needs
you know, rapid growth. So I lost my daughter almost
four years ago and the pain of that was completely
(20:41):
life changing. And with that, I can't help but think
about how this invasion is forcing families to endure a
level of pain and suffering that is probably unimaginable for
most people. But what's the what's the general feeling there?
How does this affect you as somebody that's know, a
politician or someone that's you know that loves your country
(21:04):
and and wants to change it for good. First of all,
I'm sorry to hear about your story. And yes, I
can't imagine the level of pain people are going through.
I was reading, and the stories of children suffering do
touch me most. It's like I was reading a story
(21:24):
in Mariupo actually where six or seven year old girl
died from dehydration, and that like that story, when I
read it, it kept me kept me awake for for
a couple of nights. I couldn't sleep, just because I
was trying to imagine that poor mother sitting in a
bunker with your with your child, keeping her on your
(21:46):
arms and seeing her diet. It's like and it's it's
it's terrible. Probably, yeah, I was trying to grasp that,
but I just tried to run away from those sorts
of because even thinking about that is is is painful.
The mother died herself as well, by the way, this
is what Putin is doing, and this is what the
(22:07):
world needs to know, and the world kind of not
react that. However, you felt about the global response to
the war, I think the first the first week or
so of war, I got so irritated by a tweet
or video by Secretary of State Lincoln. Again, we're grateful
for the support to again in and all, but the
video stated like Ukrainians are so inspiring, I'm so inspired
(22:30):
by them, and I felt like this immense rage, like
I don't want to be inspiring. I want to be inspiring,
you know, to other people. But sorry, I want to
be alive, and I want my child to be alive,
and I want to be able to go to my
home and to take my son home and to put
him to bed in the evening and you know, do
the stuff that we used to do. So so I
(22:51):
am extremely angered by by this lack of reaction, and
I do think that there is there are many miscalculations
in the Western reaction because what they do not understand
probably and probably something that we are seeing much better
from Ukraine from Ukraine here is that Russia is a
very difficult country. We know that Ukraine has had tense
(23:13):
relations with Russia for centuries, so this doesn't start right
now like it's complicated for centuries. That is probably what
the world doesn't know that much about. They were trying
to ban our language, they were trying to subjugate the people,
They were trying to send some of the people to
you know, to distant parts of Russia. They were killing
our like intellectuals, writers, and so when they killed the
(23:37):
ten million Ukrainians and what we call all of them war,
which is the Great Famine into thirty three. So this
is at least to say, a complicated country. Still not
recognized as a genocide by the majority of countries, by
the way, So so we know that better that this
whole country is to a very big extent screwed up.
I think that many on the West are scared to
(23:59):
say this, that this can sound discriminatory or whatever, but
it's the whole country that is screwed up, like literally
that no matter what you think that that I'm being
too harsh or anything. Well, maybe the right ten thousand
people who are okay, the majority of them have left
Russia by now. But other than that, the majority of
people are just just crazy and they and the whole
(24:21):
like political organization of Russia, it has never been a
democratic state. It has never even attempted to be a
democratic state. It never like the idea of respect to
human dignity was never part of their internal ideology as
a nation. That is something that is so different from Ukraine.
And this is like so different from all this, like
(24:43):
what they're saying in the like the Russian literature and
so on, that is completely different from the Russian culture
everyday culture, and that is again harsh to accept. But
that is the biggest difference between Russians and Ukrainians is
that in Ukrainian political culture. And I have many issues
with your and political culture, corruption being part of that.
I do recognize it. But for us, this idea of
(25:05):
freedom is so so internally important. Like in the history,
we did have those period of Cossacks. I think many
people think they're Russian, but they're actually Ukrainian Cossacks who
were fighting basically against everyone. Then we did have a
big anarchist anarchist anarchist movement in the central Ukraine, and
(25:27):
that is again so anarchism is not very good in
terms of state building, but that is just just to
show you to what extent this society is built, like
horizontal and not vertical, and to what extent this idea
of defending freedom is so much is a part of
the culture. And that is why here in Ukraine we
have seen people who have seen Russian soldiers and they're
(25:50):
not running away, but they're actually taken them with whatever
they have, like like a lot of cocktails, bare hands, whatever.
This is something that Russians would never do. And there
is another like example, I don't know, I'm leaning away
a little bit. Well, get back to what I went
to say. But in Ukraine, we did have two histories
(26:12):
of what we call my dance, like large revolutions. So
we stood up to the rulers that we didn't like,
we went to the protest that what part was part
of both into thousand four into thousandto teen fourteen. In Ukraine,
when the police becomes too aggressive and starts grabbing people
on the on the realist, on the streets, everybody around
(26:33):
starts fighting back and trying to take those people from
the police. And then look at the the protest protest
actions by Russians. They see police taking a person and
at best they just filming it on their phone. Not
a single person is trying to you know, to you know,
to save the person being taken by the police. This
(26:54):
is so much different like Ukraine. I think that's important
for the world to understand. It was is that we
are not similar in so many ways. And this, this
internal idea of freedom is so important to us. And
that is why we we are expecting the world to
see that, and the world that is claiming to respect
freedom to recognize that right now, what we are fighting
(27:16):
for is exactly this idea of freedom for us are
I admire in his passion for history and science and
how she uses that knowledge to implement change In Ukraine.
(27:38):
What's going on there is Unimaginablelike Ina, I hope the
rest of the world increases their support to protect Ukraine's freedom.
Slava Krania, You've just listened to the unimaginable. I'm your host,
James Brown. Until next time, they are an Imagina
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