Exactly seven years ago, Ukraine was convulsed by crisis. Dozens of protesters had been fatally shot by police and the president had reportedly fled the country. The events came to be known as the Euromaidan revolution and they set Ukraine on a bumpy path towards integration with the West. To take a closer look at where Ukraine now stands along this road, Armen Georgian is joined by the country's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who's a career diplomat and a specialist in strategic communications and digital diplomacy.
It's a long-running and highly contentious project: the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that is designed to transport gas directly from Russia to Germany, across the Baltic Sea and bypassing Eastern Europe.
Now Ukraine's government is hoping that the arrival of Joe Biden in the White House could help put the brakes on Nord Stream 2, as Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told FRANCE 24: "Nord Stream 2 is a big problem. Not only for Ukraine, but for Europe. It reshapes the energy balance. It deviates from the strategy of diversifying supplies. We are satisfied with the messages that the Biden administration is sending, which have confirmed that Nord Stream 2 is a bad project. But we should give the administration more time to take specific actions to make an impact on the construction of the pipeline.”
Kuleba also called on French President Emmanuel Macron to "make another push" in the effort to resolve the ongoing conflict with separatists in eastern Ukraine: "France is a leader of Europe; it has all the opportunities to demonstrate its leadership. The settlement of the conflict – caused by the Russian aggression against my country – is an excellent field to play the role of leader."
He added: "The recent positive dynamics in the settlement process was initiated at the summit held in Paris at the initiative of President Macron in late 2019. However, that process reached a certain point, where you have to make another push. We see France as a country that is capable of giving this push."
On Ukraine's integration with the West, the Ukrainian foreign minister restated his government's European ambitions: "The Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union has a very clear line in it. The strategic goal is gradual integration of Ukraine into EU markets. The European economy will benefit; the Ukrainian economy will benefit; our companies will benefit; and so will people. In our view, it is in the best interests of Europe, and of the transatlantic space, to expand its values and its security as broadly as possible."
On fake news, the minister said he believes there is "no alternative" to bringing in new regulations: "In my view, there is no alternative to regulating media, when it comes to fighting disinformation, in particular on social media. I appreciate freedom of speech. It's essential and fundamental. But we should not allow the abuse of freedom of speech in the interests of disinformation and propaganda. Regulation should be highly tailored. But if we leave things like this, we will lose freedom of speech. That's the biggest threat."
Kuleba also highlighted the case of a Ukrainian schoolboy recently attacked in Paris, as an example of disinformation which he believes is backed by the Russian state: "We closely followed developments after the attack on Yuriy and we identified a lot of disinformation efforts by Russia and its operatives. They tried to distort the reality of this case to present Yuriy not as Ukrainian but as a member of the Russian-speaking community. For the Russian propaganda system, every human being is just a tool. For us, a human being is a value. That's the difference between us."
