Ukrainian philosopher, journalist and writer. He is the President of PEN Ukraine and the current Analytics Director at Internews Ukraine, one of the largest and oldest Ukrainian media NGOs. He is also the Editor-in-chief of UkraineWorld.org, a multimedia project in English about Ukraine and an Associate professor at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. He has been published in numerous outlets, including The Economist, Le Monde, The Financial Times, The New York Times and Newsweek.
The war in Ukraine has shown up the limits of European pacifism and revived a long-forgotten precept: republican opposition to empire. Today’s imperial threat no longer comes disguised as democracy but is openly anti-democratic. Part of the series ‘Lessons of war: The rebirth of Europe revisited’.
Beware interpreting Ukraine’s current political landscape with traditional European values, says Volodymyr Yermolenko: Kremlin-backed zoopolitics, upholding the survival of the fittest, uses liberal discourse against the democratic world.
Western Europe’s culture of anti-violence continues to exert a magnetic pull on Ukrainian society. But will that be enough to resist Russia’s twenty-first century politics of dog-eat-dog? The answer depends on the strength of Europe’s own conviction, argues philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko.
A majority of almost two-thirds opposed the Association Agreement between the European Union and Ukraine in a referendum in the Netherlands on 6 April. As the public debate surrounding the referendum gained pace, the Ukrainian independent TV channel Hromadske became an important forum for associated discussion. Now that the results are in, Hromadske journalist Volodymyr Yermolenko assesses the implications for EU-Ukraine relations, and European politics in general.
For Vladimir Putin, the West’s tolerance is weakness and dialogue is failure to impose force. Because KGB-styled Russia believes that either you devour, or you are devoured. Europe’s “silence of the lambs”, writes Volodymyr Yermolenko, is not a proper response to Russia’s war.
There are two Europes, writes Volodymyr Yermolenko: a Europe of rules and regulations, and a Europe founded upon faith in the European idea. And of course, as recent events in Ukraine show, the European idea extends well beyond the formal frontiers of the European Union.
