 Welcome to the future of Eastern Europe and Eco-Democracy, a four-part podcast special produced by the Green European Foundation, with the support of the Green Institute of Greece and the financial support of the European Parliament to the Green European Foundation. The podcast features extracts from interviews of delegates to the future of Eastern Europe Conference, which took place on the 6th and 7th of June in Riga. The conference brought together young Green activists from different parts of Eastern Europe to talk about the future of the region, as well as the challenges and opportunities for an ecological and progressive turnaround. In this episode, we hear from Katja Andreeva, member of the Corporation and Development Network Executive Committee and representative of Ukraine, Lusine Kosakian, also a member of the CDN Executive Committee and co-founder of Frontline Youth Network in Armenia, Georgii Ptkaladze, Network Coordinator at CDN and one of the organisers of the conference and Alexei from Belarusian Greens. The episode focuses on the current geopolitical situation, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the wider debate on security and peace. What do you think are the main political reasons behind this war, as I did 80 years ago? For me, it's imperialist ambitions of Russian nature, like Russian empires, we can call it like this now. So, because Ukraine did not attack any country, Ukraine just tried to live their own life. We wanted to become a member of the European Union, we want to become a member of NATO, not just to fight as someone, but just to be secure and to feel the safety, because it's very hard now to understand if our country were in nut or nothing will happen to us. We just wanted to live our own lives, but Putin decided that their sphere of influence should be on Ukraine too. Firstly, I would like to ask you how have you experienced conflict as a young activist and how did you try to resolve it? I'm coming from Armenia. I've been born and raised in Davush region, which is basically the bordering province of Davush and its neighbouring with Azerbaijan. I've been born in the year when the 19th war ended, so I never seen the war at that time, but as a child I experienced the consequences of the war and from then I guess peace became one of the driving forces of my activism. After, as you know, during 2020 we experienced our second war, so it was always there when I've been doing my activism. I studied human rights and democracy. I also did my research in peace. Now I'm trying to devote my time, my knowledge on grassroots activism and also try to advocate for peace and also peace education. Now we're in front lines activities. This is what we basically do. We do peace advocacy, peace education, and we're trying to push women's and young people's participation in peace processes. As the first question I would like to ask you if you could choose a specific moment or historical event that played a crucial role in the current geopolitical situation in Eastern Europe, which event would that be? I think that key event in this situation, geopolitical situation, is the fall of the Soviet Union because the fall of the Soviet Union creates a lot of ethnic and economic and so on and so forth problems in this region but not provides something that fix these problems. So Nagorno-Karabakh problem begins after falling of Soviet Union and Crimean problems begins after falling of Soviet Union. So when Soviet Union falls, Crimean problem was not solved exactly that Russia will stop in their demands on Ukraine. So how did your country experience the fall of the Soviet Union? After falling of the Soviet Union, we have our parliament that elected in 1990 and it was a semi-democratic parliament because the election of 1990 was half-fairy but it have a lot of democratic opposition and it accept a lot of important documents in Belarus independence but after that the elites in Belarus should try to collect their first capital and then they shouldn't need the system of Soviet democracy that doing in Belarus after 1990 and they provide new constitution that was presidential constitution and after election in 1994 Alexander Lukashenko was elected. So after that they create institutional roots for the orthocracy in Belarus and weak parliament can't oppose this establishment of dictatorship in the country and since 1996 Belarus is fully orthocracy and till now it's dictatorship. During the last days we had an extensive session about the Russian invasion in Ukraine in your opinion what are the main political reasons behind the current Russian invasion in Ukraine and which are the best possible solutions? That is a very hard question to... I think we had a very good discussion on context of this invasion by our members of the city and executive committee members and former executive committee members from Ukraine I think that had a very great input how this happened but to go to what I think I agree with all of the things that has been said from my friends from Ukraine but I would follow up on this that what we are seeing is Russia is declining global power I mean Russia is not a Soviet Union Russia is not the second biggest player in the world politics or international order Russia is third or even fourth and it's gonna go worse and worse and worse because of this obstruct and obscure nationalism and this conservatism and this imperialism that is in the genes of the Russian politics for the last hundreds of years which has not changed even in the last 30 years with its imperial ambitions we're seeing how they're harming economy how they're harming their own people how they're harming their neighbors so Russia is declining power and because Russia is declining power it realizes it's declining power and it wants to do something to somehow to position itself as a global power again and to create with China and with other authoritarian countries to create an alternative to the global let's say liberal order which we have to criticize I mean during this conference we have talked a lot about these two sides and well I think we are part of this liberal camp but it doesn't mean that it's perfect and I think when we will be discussing NATO and the European Union and the USA and all this western camp, this liberal order camp we come to very critical of it but we should be also aware that we are part of this camp and sadly I don't see any other camps in this role so what Russia is trying to do is to have this create this alternative to this liberal order and alternative is very conservative almost fascist we can say what Putin's speech was before the invasion of Ukraine this was the fascism and this is just insane that we heard this in 2022 so one thing is that it wants to stay relevant and the other one it wants to control the region Russia as an imperial power sees the Eastern Europe as its own sphere of influence so for it Ukraine especially and Ukraine and Belarus because you know there is this myth that it's a same nation and this brotherhood and sisterhood or whatever this mythology which is very much shaped from the Russian side Russia as a big brother for Russia Ukraine that doesn't want to be in Russia is almost an existential threat especially for the non-democratic and authoritarian Russia because if Ukraine and it will manages to be democratic be part of this let's say liberal camp but also have the possibility to pursue more social more ecological policies and be prosperous well that's a danger for Russia because well people in Russia are not living well Russia is very inequality is one of the highest in this world you have these two cities which are in which city centers people live good few of them and then you have Russia where 20% of the population doesn't have access to water doesn't have access to gas in Russia which is exporting gas and gas is like 40% of their economy almost they don't have electricity and the gas and it is very poor in that sense so of course it is dangerous if they will see Ukraine as an example it's a threat to Putin and to and it's not just Putin I mean if there was no Putin there would be some Vladimir Ivanovich Ivanov it's not Putin it's the system which enables Putin and this is also super important to never forget when we say that about this world this is not only Putin's world this is the systemic war so on the one hand we have this conservative like 19th century stuck in 19th century Russia and which wants to destroy this order and on the other hand we have Ukraine which wants to be democratic which wants to be more European which wants to be more social this is behind this because I mean Russia doesn't want territories right I mean it's very large it doesn't want Crimea because it wants Crimea I mean okay Crimea it wants for number of other reasons like Black Sea and everything it will lead us to a different discussion but it's not only about the territories it's like its second thing it is about not allowing Ukraine to become to be a country as an example for Russian citizens and I think that is one of the big parts which we should always think into consideration It is evident that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought up to the surface a series of fundamental existential questions both for greens and members of the green political movement more widely environmental activists as well and advocates of peace and demilitarization there are a series of very difficult questions that need to be answered everything from security to energy and autonomy as well as fundamental issues with regard to authoritarianism and democracy how do we respond to these challenges how do we respond to an aggressive neo-imperialist power how do we respond to increasing militarization of our own societies and increased military spending what is the role that Europe has to play as a geopolitical actor now and in the future as a guarantor of peace and security in Eastern Europe how can cooperation between different countries in Eastern Europe develop a different kind of security architecture for the whole of the region are we back in the era of spheres of influence or can we envisage a new and better reality for everyone involved you actually held a really interesting workshop this day where you mentioned positive and negative conflict I was wondering whether you could briefly explain the differentiation between the two and I would also like to ask you do you think that in Eastern Europe right now we are experiencing more positive or negative conflict and what is the influence of that to the world what would you bring? Sure, peace is really abstract phenomenon and it is really hard to understand sometimes what is peace but theoretically there are two dimensions two definitions of peace one is negative and the other one is positive peace so when it comes to negative peace it is rendered as situation when there is no violence no conflict so this is negative peace but when we talk about peace in general I guess every individual will refer to positive peace which is more than absence of violence but also the environment where people can function and anything that will guarantee security and safety of each individual well when all of these are there we can then call it as a positive peace for Europe well Europe itself is not unilateral right it has different development dynamics within its states so we have several states that proudly would say that they were living their lives in peace so their peace could be basically more western Europe could be rendered as but simultaneously we have eastern Europe when at the moment currently we see Ukraine in war so this is the absence of war but as I mentioned in 2020 the situation in Belarus the violent actions and also the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan and nowadays situation this is basically can be called absence of peace and revealed as negative peace basically absence of war so there is no single answer to this but Europe has different faces at this point and you can find both positive and negative peace situations so if you mention NATO I will grab the chance to ask you can NATO play the role of security war and all in eastern Europe? that is a very super hard question because I mean I'm coming from the greens and I'm part of the green political family and the green political family was founded as a political group which was well against NATO back in 80s we were against NATO we were against the military bases we were pacifists, we were against them delivering arms and so on and so forth but I think this is some red signs and warnings that things have not been going well and Russia is a threat to us well war in Georgia was starting of the war in Ukraine 2014 I mean in the 90s Chechnya which people just forget what Russia did and they did terrible things it was almost a genocide of the people of Chechnya so there was this red flags already there but somehow western Europe did ignore it and we should credit it but for the NATO it is very hard well if you want to be relevant politically and if you want to be sane we have to adjust our positions we cannot always be perfectly fit into the ideological desires that we are having of the world peace and the world without arms and all this all these beautiful things which I want to see in this world I don't want to see any arm in the world and I don't want to live in a world without nuclear weapons without any rockets and missiles and tanks and great but to do the reality check we have a threat which is imminent threat it's not like China, I mean China is a threat as well for us but Russia is a very imminent threat which started war in Ukraine and it can start possibly war in the country that is part of the NATO I mean of course it is unlikely because I mean Russia is losing the war in Ukraine but can imagine Russia fighting a NATO of course NATO can destroy Russia in a seconds it's not equal powers I mean Russia is not so attuned again it's much more weak so but Russia can do a lot of bad things still I mean it can people and it can cause destruction and I mean well and I very much hope we are not living through this but it's gonna be the end of the world if Russia decides to attack a NATO country right but I mean I think NATO is stopping Russia from attacking the NATO country because it knows very well if it does I mean it's the end of the world so I do think the NATO is a guarantee of security in Eastern Europe of course it is to be taken with a pinch of assault and we should be openly criticising some actions of the NATO and or the way it works or like we have the past not the best things the NATO has done but coming from this I'm coming from Georgia if Georgia was if NATO member states gave Georgia membership back in not just the membership but the membership action plan I'm back in 2008 to Georgia and Ukraine instead of writing this very very vague and very non-specific phrase that Georgia and Ukraine will become members of the NATO it is written there but I mean it's not written when how what conditions if West was more pragmatic back then and did not block the membership of the Georgian Ukraine I'm very confident that what we are seeing now would not happen and it is the responsibility of the Western leaders what is happening in Ukraine and we should address that because if you look at the other countries Baltic states we are now in Riga Baltic states has a big problem of ethnically there are a lot of Russians living in these countries and one of the reasons why how Russia started the war how it justifies the war from its own perspective is that it is this term I forgot in English called citizen or something like that you know and it believes that everyone who is ethnical Russian and is kind of Russian speaking is can be perceived as a citizen of Russia so it gives itself a right to invade in other country if they are ethnical Russians who are under danger Baltic states there is a almost dozen, several dozen percentage of the population are Russians so it is a perfect Kazus belly for Russia to invade and I think if there was no NATO in the Baltic states we would have seen this happening what is happening in Ukraine here even much earlier based on these examples that we already have I think we can clearly say that yes NATO is a security guarantee for Eastern Europe and would be good to you know in the future have some kind of alternative of the NATO and think about that in the future but for now NATO is a security guarantee for Eastern Europe but not only for Eastern Europe if you see Russian tanks what is written there and if you see Russian helicopter which Ukrainians took down on the Ukrainian soil from the air it says Na'berlin which is on Berlin Kiev is not only city that is in danger Berlin is in danger, Paris is in danger Brussels is in danger, Washington is in danger we have to understand that we are living in a very different world starting from the February and then we have to adjust our political positions based on the reality that we are living in do you think that NATO can act as the safety guarantee for the EU for sure at least can NATO in a way use their military forces on the territory of Ukraine in general like if you think that NATO is there to provide security for European countries is that his role or is it something else for me yes, especially for countries who are near this Russia like Baltic countries for example they also can be in danger now and yeah even not how military movie actor but mostly as a diplomacy actor political actor they know that country who was in this union they are somehow in cooperation and they somehow train their soldiers for example they prepare their army not to have a big war just to act immediately and to know how to act because for example then the war started 8 years ago Ukraine has a very big army and that's why Russia occupied our territory so fast now you could possibly run through your presentation the parts we have mentioned so far so for today we even cannot count how many people died how many civilians and Ukrainian soldiers died during these full-scale invasions we just know that it's not 100 people it is not 1,000 people it is 10,000 people unfortunately and 10,000 of families was there family members were friends and it's such a strategy for Ukrainian now and every 6 Ukrainian became a refugee and they not only went abroad they also travel across the Ukraine and they try to find the safest place but Russia not attacked every city and for example in Lviv where I live now as an internal displaced person too because my city was occupied we had air raids, syrians we can't have it anytime and for example a week ago in Lviv 2 days, 2 evenings when you just sit in your corridor or you just sit in a basement and waiting when it finished and for today also we know that more than 30,000 of Russian soldiers were died and means that it's not Putin's war it's war of these soldiers who died it's also war of families it's also war of friends who support I think their decision to went to Ukraine and to fight and to not return home what do you think of peace landscape in Europe is going to be in 10 years from now I wish I were more hopeful on that I wish there could be of course positive peace everywhere but nowadays dynamics of power and also dependence of states to each other I guess that we won't see positive peace in all European states in 10 years but I wish we act for peace and at least see the negative peace there so we can also build on that you've been listening to part 1 of the future of Eastern Europe EcoDemocracy a podcast special made possible by the Green European Foundation and the Green Institute of Greece