The Third Session of the XVII USPS programme

The third session is always more practical and concerts reforms, state policy and political parties. What were this year’s discussions about?

Participants of this year’s selection, according to Third Session tradition, visited National museum “Prison on Lotskyi Street”.

This place holds great importance for understanding the history of the Ukrainian fight for independency and preservation of national memory. Here were located apparatuses of the punitive bodies of the three occupation authorities: Polish, Soviet and German. Terrible crimes against humanity took place behind these walls, which cannot be forgotten.

This is especially painful now, as thousands of Ukrainians on occupied territories and in Russian captivity yet again subjected to torture and inhumane treatment by Russian occupiers.

That is exactly why participants of USPS come here every time  – to pay tribute to people, who fought for Ukrainian independence and to realize responsibility to the past and the future.

The world order established after the Second World War has changed. The major players have changed, along with the global security architecture. So has Ukraine.

Although the West is united in supporting Ukraine, the rest of the world is not. Our main task is to talk about ourselves, deepen the world knowledge of the Ukrainian context and the course of the war with the Russian Federation in all possible ways.

We talked about how to establish diplomatic relations with countries that still maintain a “grey” position and what to do when classic diplomacy does not work, with Svitlana Kovalchuk, executive director of Yalta European Strategy and a 2019 USPS alumna.

(Dis)trust in political patries is not exclusively Ukrainian problem – political institutions are in the state of a crisis all around Europe. Innovation, inclusiveness, decency, and institutionalisation with depersonalisation can change this situation. But what about the Ukrainian political community?

What is the main challenge for political patries in Ukraine? What can change this state of affairs? Marcin Walecki, the Senior Resident Country Director for the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in Ukraine, pondered these questions on the discussion platform about the post-war challenges for Ukrainian parties.

The Swinging Sixties also known as “cultural decade” in the West were a period when traditional hierarchies begin to disintegrate and make way for the birth of modernity. However, the Ukrainian Sixties were in the totalitarian regime, so our rebellion was rather internal, existential resistance. In these conditions the Sixtiers movement was born – people, who continuously carried ethical protest, that somewhat transformed into political one.

Why are the Sixtiers important to us? What were their views formed around, and how did they manage to get out of the “soviet coordinate system”? The participants talked about all that with Radomyr Mokryk, PhD, historian, cultural researcher, author of the book “Rebellion against the Empire” and researcher at Charles University in Prague.

Outside the discussion platforms, our participants met with the mayor of Lviv, Andriy Sadovyi, where they had the opportunity to talk about the city’s development strategy and urgent community problems in the context of the war and post-war reconstruction.

The presentation of the UNBROKEN Ukraine ecosystem was particularly interesting. This system is aimed at rehabilitation, support, and care for people and is currently being actively developed in Lviv. The mayor talked about the city objects that are already included in this system, and also shared information about the projects that they are developing in cooperation with various countries, foundations, and organisations.

Our participants also discussed the issue of gender-responsive leadership, because the issue of equality is closely tied to the public demand for justice.

During the discussion, the participants not only heard about prejudices, social roles and stereotypes attached to them, but also reflected on what each one of them can do for fairer treatment of representatives of different sexes and genders.

Lecturer Kateryna Ryabiko, Chief Strategy Officer at DAC, until recently the First Deputy Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), engaged the participants in the practical solution of cases related to labour discrimination, political participation, professional and business ethics, and in the end – a question of mobilisation. She emphasized that this is a dialogue, not a debate, because the absence of conflict at the concepts level is incredibly important in this topic.

Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, undoubtedly, changed Ukrainian society. The Parliament is also changing, because it, as the only legislative body, plays a critical role in overcoming the challenges caused by a full-scale invasion, and its institutional capacity is the key to Ukraine’s movement towards EU membership.

What is the Parliament going through now? What can the political system of Ukraine be like in the future? How to ensure sustainable development of the parliament as an institution? The USPS group discussed this and more with Oleksandr Korniyenko, First Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.

One of the discussion platforms of this session concerned the issue of justice. Andryi Bohachov, professor of the Department of Theoretical and Practical Philosophy of Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University, was invited as a lecturer.

Is it possible to contain the answer to the question “what is justice” in one definition? What kind of society can be considered “socially just”? Why be fair at all? During this discussion, the participants learned about different philosophical approaches to this concept, raised their questions and tried to consider dilemmas that arise both in the theoretical field and in real life.

Artificial intelligence is slowly but surely taking its place in our everyday life. The integration of AI into various areas of the public and private sectors signals the beginning of a new era in the involvement of technology in human life. Currently, the development of AI is a real race where Ukraine as a country cannot allow to be left behind.

But is everything so “dramatically cool” in AI decision-making as opposed to human decisions? The participants of USPS talked about this with Oleksii Molchanovskyi, the Chief Innovation Officer of the Ukrainian Catholic University and a 2018 USPS alumnus.

The conclusion that can be drawn from global challenges such as COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine is the failure of the system of international institutions to solve these problems. Many aspects are called into question: international law, security systems, as well as the concepts of “West” and “non-West” as well as the balance between them.

Ukraine acted as a catalyst for changes that many did not want and had neither the political will nor the compulsion to change something in long-established orders and practices. However, it is no longer possible to leave everything as it is. Ukraine has become a symbol of what prompts the transformation of systems and models into a new reality. What consequences will this have for Ukraine and for the world remains a question for now.

The participants talked about this topic with Pavlo Klimkin, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine (2014-2019).

Quality education is the key to sustainable development of the state and qualified specialists in all areas. However, does the existing education system meet the needs to face the challenges of our country today? What is the Ukrainian context of higher education, and how does it differ from the Western European system? Do we see the university as a place for a scientific or professional career, or do we see it as a place for “just experience passing” (getting a degree, getting a salary, etc.)?

Mychailo Wynnyckyj, Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine, spoke about the current state and challenges of the entire educational system during the Third Session of USPS.

We are sad that the programme has come to an end, but we are not saying goodbye just yet. We are sure that many joint projects and important changes to strengthen our state await us. In the meantime, we are preparing for the World Forum for Democracy in Strasbourg, in which the USPS delegation participates every year together with other representative countries of the Association of Schools of Political Studies.