“The text of the speech in the Ukrainian hub of the European Parliament at the “Partnerships and Veterans’ Health” Summit, Brussels, October 30, 2024. I often speak at international conferences. During the years of the Great War, I gave dozens of speeches, because everyone wants to talk about reconstruction.”, — write: www.pravda.com.ua
The text of the speech in the Ukrainian hub of the European Parliament at the “Partnerships and Veterans’ Health” Summit, Brussels, October 30, 2024.
I often speak at international conferences. During the years of the Great War, I gave dozens of speeches, because everyone wants to talk about reconstruction.
I start by introducing myself. I am an architect, entrepreneur, owner of an architectural bureau, vice-president of the National Union of Architects of Ukraine, Chairman of the Charitable Fund of the Architectural Chamber. All these roles are honorable and I chose them myself. Now another scary word that I did not choose was added to my self-definitions.
I am a widow.
My husband Arsen Fedosenko is a famous Ukrainian photographer who died in the war on June 10 of this year. His photo and his portrait are now next to you in the hall.
In February 2022, Arsen volunteered for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. We stood together in Kiev for two weeks in line at the Military Commissariat in the March frost…
Arsen wrote about himself: “Since the spring of 2022, I am in the ranks of the Armed Forces, with a camera in my hands. In the breaks between official duties, I take pictures of our defenders, help the world see the war crimes of Russia and our struggle. Sometimes my portraits become the last for my heroes… Unfortunately, a photograph does not protect against bullets, but it can protect against oblivion and becomes an invaluable document…”.
All these years, I tried to support my family, children, company, unite the architectural community, fight against corrupt officials in power, do reconstruction projects, and collect funds for the front. The Charity Fund of the Chamber of Architecture collected UAH 10 million for the purchase of weapons, not reconstruction projects.
We wanted to talk to Europe. We made our pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale last year with our own funds and resources. Because the necessary grant programs do not work in my experience. State support does not work. The only thing that works is our horizontal interaction: Ukrainians to Ukrainians. We collected funds for the pavilion through Facebook two weeks before the opening. One hundred thousand hryvnias…
Can someone in Europe do a world-scale project with such funds? And Ukrainians can.
The film “Voice of Ukrainian Architects” was part of the exposition. In the film, the fighting architects addressed the world, each with their own message. And the world public asked me: “Why do you have architects fighting? You don’t have a regular army?”. Europeans did not understand and it seems they still do not understand that our entire country is fighting for the survival of Ukrainians as a nation.
Well, like the whole… More precisely, the best part of the country, the best patriotic people.
They are being killed and may end if Europe does not join the fight seriously.
I really regret that I spent a lot of time during this war at the reconstruction conference, when I could have spent more time with my husband…
At the beginning, these conferences seemed important to me, too, but now I avoid them. Because there may be no reconstruction if we lose the country, and everything is leading to that…
You know, when people expressed their condolences to me after the death of Arsen, they often said that I should live for the sake of my children. Such strange advice… My sons are now 18 and 21. They can go to the front at any moment for mobilization or as volunteers, and I will be left without a husband and without children.
In February 2022, the eldest son studied in England. He had the option not to return, but he returned home, and then he could not finish his studies, because the state did not develop any mechanisms for such Ukrainian students and closed the borders. We lost both our education and our savings for it. When my son entered a university in Kyiv, the state requested compensation for re-education and we paid out the remaining savings of another 98,000 hryvnias. The younger son had the opportunity to go abroad before coming of age during the war, as many of his peers do today, but he did not. Because I, Arsen, and my children choose Ukraine.
At the same time, I feel that in my country, patriotic Ukrainians are the most discriminated community. After all, we invest the most valuable things in the state – our resources and our lives. At this summit, representatives of the government and parliament presented their work to support veterans of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. I am not a veteran, I am the wife of the deceased. My experience as a widow – for 5 months after the death of Arsen, I did not receive any help from the state, not a single penny.
But my sons and I chose, are choosing and will continue to choose Ukraine, because we realize that we are building it, that it is our home and our Motherland.
I am now living in a moral dilemma why I am still in Kyiv and not in the army. After all, I know that there is a catastrophic lack of fighters at the front. Is it so important now to save the company, jobs, do reconstruction projects, support children? Should I hold the front line where it is really needed? Does my activity as an architect, entrepreneur, mother, and even a person who is able to unite communities justify my stay in Kyiv, and not in the trenches?
Because talks about the future reconstruction already sound like bullying, you can’t rely on the state, you have to support it yourself. But it is not better with Europe and the world.
The patriotic part of society is discriminated against both in Ukraine and in Europe, for which we had hopes and are increasingly disappointed in these hopes. I submitted 32 grant applications from the Charitable Fund of the Chamber of Architecture. She received only three refusals, the others remained without a single response.
But we made all these projects ourselves. We are Ukrainians. We are willing to support each other and rely only on ourselves. The only thing that I clearly realized during the war is that you have to rely only on yourself, to help your country and your country.
Although this is a great injustice. We need long-range weapons, security guarantees and NATO membership from Europe. The highest cynicism is when the absence of these solutions in the world is explained by Ukrainian corruption. Only the lack of help actually destroys the living, creative, honest and patriotic, and everything is fine with the corrupt. Grant funds are even distributed to them, because the funds go through the ministries, where we have enough corrupt people.
An eloquent example is the former Minister of Reconstruction, Oleksandr Kubrakov, who managed to block the funding of the urban planning code through USAID. Such as Kubrakov have already created their charitable foundations and they will be given funding without problems.
Europe supports its aid projects, not ours, and moreover, this aid goes through companies and projects convenient for Europe, where European experts receive funds, and Ukrainians work on a volunteer basis. European colonization. At least this is the case in reconstruction projects. This is a subjective experience. Mine and my colleagues.
I think what is wrong with the world? What about values? Because the real corruption is UN Secretary General Guterres, who goes to Russia and hugs dictators and criminals Putin and Lukashenko. At the same time, he ignores the peace summit in Switzerland, which is a farewell and Ukraine. This is what corruption really looks like. Corruption at the highest level.
I have attended many conferences over the years to make sure that Europe and the US can only help as they are comfortable with. In fact, the world is just watching how we are slowly being killed and, at best, finding a way to help that is comfortable for itself. Comfortable for you, not necessary for us.
Weapons, funds, membership in NATO, stand by us and fight for democracy. Is Europe capable of this? What will Europe do when Ukraine falls? When will all the patriots be killed and there will really be a territory with corrupt officials and the Russian government? The territory that will become a springboard for Russia’s attack on Europe. When your husbands and you have to fight. Will you stand in line at the military commissariat?
What are European values and principles worth if you can’t pay for them? Ukraine pays with lives. The lives of those who put the value of the state of Ukraine, the value of freedom and democracy higher than the value of their lives.
Every night I have a dream where I am sitting in the intensive care unit next to Arsen, and suddenly he comes to his senses and opens his eyes. In a dream, I cry from happiness and thank God. I am very happy. And then I wake up to a cold bed, darkness and reality. And so every night. Today too. I don’t know if there are worse tortures than such dreams with a return to reality.
In reality, where I envy people with amputations. Because they are alive. Because you can live without a leg and an arm. And it is difficult to survive with a head injury.
As with a broken soul.
There should be an exhortation at the end, but I don’t have one. Europe chooses beautiful help: no blood, no real weapons and no sensitive content. However, with coffee breaks and lunches at conferences. I realize that we live in a post-heroic age where everyone wants a beach holiday and consumerism. But we, Ukrainians, do not have such a choice. We will either choose blood, tears, and dignity, or we will perish. I am very afraid that Europe may miss our death just as it missed the Holodomor in 1933. And despite the fact that the modern war is live, Europe can miss it simply because of its own comfort, unwillingness of sensitive content or a pre-planned vacation.
My appeal to Ukrainians is to accept the reality in which you can count only on yourself and your own. I don’t know how I would have coped if I didn’t have the talent to unite people. My friends, colleagues, acquaintances and just people from social networks: collected money for the funeral, made uninterrupted light in the office, brought food, cleaned Arsen’s vineyard, organized his photo exhibitions, made this exhibition as well. And I am grateful to everyone personally who helped. This is our great strength. The strength of Ukrainians.
I will mechanically leave a slide with my contacts and the QR code of the Charitable Foundation. All of a sudden, you want to donate the funds we will use to buy the drones. Although no one donated at any of the previous conferences.
I know you didn’t like my performance. I don’t like him myself, but in the stated topic I promised to reveal “the reality of a woman during the war.”
That’s what she is – my reality – the reality of a broken woman, whom everyone around her considers strong for some reason.
Thank you for your attention.
Anna Kiriyarchitect, deputy chairman of the Architectural Chamber of NSAU, wife of the fallen military photographer, captain of the ZSU, Arsen Fedosenko