On 21 February, three winners of the essay contest “10 years of Euromaidan: how European values determined the path of Ukraine” will be announced. A total of 142 essays were submitted to the contest. The jury is currently evaluating 12 entries that have been shortlisted – that is, those that made it to the final round.

The finalists are as follows:

1. Anastasiia Tymkiv, Kalush,
   Ivano-Frankivsk region
2. Anastasia Vasylyshyna,
   Ivankiv, Kyiv region
3. Andriy Kuchemba, Lviv
4. Anna Kryzhanivska, Vinnytsia
5. Anton Serdechnyi,
   Sofiyivska Borshchahivka, Kyiv region
6. Diana Shulyk, Ivankiv,
   Ternopil region
7. Hanna Leshchenko, Lviv
8. Ivan Abramovych, Ternopil
9. Nadiia Lysychyna, Starokostiantyniv,
   Khmelnytskyi region

10. Shekure Ramazanova, Bucha, Kyiv region
11. Vladyslav Satsiuk, Kyiv
12. Yelyzaveta Khodorovska, Odesa

The contest is organised by the Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine to mark the 10th anniversary of the Revolution of Dignity in 2013-2014 and the 30th anniversary of the diplomatic relations established between Ukraine and the EU.

It was open to young people aged 16 to 25 who wanted to share their personal experiences or reflections on the events of the Revolution of Dignity, their impact on Ukraine and its European future.

The entries had to be written in English and be between 3,500 and 4,000 characters long. Plagiarism, abstracting other people’s thoughts, or the use of artificial intelligence were prohibited. It was also not allowed to use one’s own previous publications.

The jury of the contest includes the EU Ambassador to Ukraine Katarína Mathernová, Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine Olha Stefanishyna, Head of the State Agency for Restoration and Development of Infrastructure of Ukraine Mustafa Nayem, Director of the ‘Europe and the World’ Programme of the International Renaissance Foundation Dmytro Shulha, Ukrayinska Pravda website Editor- in-Chief Sevgil Musayeva and experts in the field of European integration and journalism.

The entries of the three winners will be published in Ukrayinska Pravda. The authors of the 12 shortlisted essays will receive incentive prizes, and the authors of all entries submitted to the contest will receive gifts as keepsakes.

In January, leading Ukrainian media outlets published a number of articles on the challenges for small and medium-sized businesses in Ukraine and updated on the support provided to entrepreneurs by the European Union.

The articles contain a lot of analysis and interesting details.

The EU’s approach to supporting Ukrainian SMEs is truly comprehensive and goes beyond direct financial assistance. An example of this is the EU4Business project’s cooperation with the Entrepreneurship and Export Promotion Office, the Ukrainian institution responsible for SMEs. The EU is helping to enhance its capacity and efficiency, while facilitating the entry of Ukrainian businesses into the European market.

Read more about this in another publication by Forbes – “Assist, engage, modernise, or how the EU supports Ukrainian institutions”.

Article “Human Capital of Ukraine and Business Development“ by Ekonomichna Pravda highlighted an obvious problem caused by the war and massive migration of Ukrainians abroad.

There is already a shortage of skilled workers, and there will be a shortage in any scenario after the victory. Even with Ukrainians returning from abroad, Ukraine will face a potential labour shortage of 3.1-4.5 million people, which cannot be replenished by domestic human resources alone.

This can only be achieved through increased productivity and innovation. “The European Union and Ukraine closely cooperate within in science-driven and high-tech programmes such as Digital Europe, Horizon Europe, Euratom and others. The EU supports Ukrainian start-ups and promotes a favourable innovation environment in the regions,” the publication said.

This topic was explored by another article by Ekonomichna Pravda, “Ecosystem of innovations – how regions of Ukraine create a favourable environment for people, ideas and business”. It described the activities and outcomes of the EU project called “New Economy of Ivano-Frankivsk”. Its goal is to create an innovation ecosystem in the city. That is, to create an environment that will facilitate generation of ideas and implementation of the latest developments, and thus, gradual transition of Ivano-Frankivsk to higher value-added economy.

The Forbes article “Legal European Integration: How Ukrainian Legislation Adapts to the EU Acquis” outlined another important aspect of the EU support for Ukrainian business – improving the regulatory environment and bringing it in line with the EU standards.

On 23 February 2022, the Kherson Drama Theatre hosted the long-awaited premiere of “Eternity and a Day”. Tickets were sold out for the following days as well.

This is one of the fragments of the film “Culture during the War. The South” shot by the creative team of the multimedia Ukrainian studies project Ukraїner as part of the EU communication campaign “Together we create. Together we preserve”.

This is a collection of artists’ reflections on culture and the need to rethink its role and the role of themselves during the war.

During the occupation of Kherson, Oleksandr Knyha was detained by Russians who tried to persuade him to cooperate with the regime. The theatre director refused, and later managed to get to the territory under the Ukrainian flag. The majority of the theatre company returned to Kherson immediately after the de-occupation, so the theatre continues to operate.

Nowadays, Yulia, who lived for a long time in the then-occupied Kherson, lives in Odesa, moved her organisation Urban Re-Public there, and cooperates with the Odesa Municipal Museum of Personal Collections after Oleksandr Bleshchunov. Its collections include more than 10,000 antiques.

The collection is now in repository, but the museum is open. In particular, last fall, it hosted an exhibition of works by Odesa artist Kyrylo Maksymenko titled “Peace Manifesto” made from the fragments of Russian shells and mines.

The European Union provided assistance in protecting the exhibits of the Odesa Art Museum through the ALIPH Foundation, an international alliance for the protection of cultural heritage in times of conflict. As a result, the collections were not damaged after the museum building had been shelled in November 2023.

The film also includes other stories and real-life examples of Ukrainian artists and culture institutions.

Documentary filmmaker Olena Maksym is fighting as part of a National Guard unit. She says that at first, she tried to film during the war, but then realised that sometimes a camera is inappropriate.

In the film, singer Jamala talks about her album Qirim, which she presented during the war, but had recorded shortly before the invasion. The album contains unique Crimean Tatar folk songs.

The film “Culture during the War. The South” completes a series of four motions completed by the Ukraïner project as part of the “Together we create. Together we preserve” campaign. The three previous films were dedicated to the western, northern, and central regions of Ukraine.

In January, Kryvyi Rih and Zaporizhzhia hosted two seven-day documentary film schools for young people aged 14 to 19. The training was attended by 90 people who created films under the mentorship of film production pros.

This training project called “The Country of My Dreams” is implemented by KIDS MOVIE FEST International Children’s Film Festival and co-financed by the EU-funded ZMINA: Rebuilding programme programme by the Izolyatsia Foundation.

According to Svitlana, the project participants selected as a result of the creative contest listened to presentations of ideas and programmes from civil society activists and experts that demonstrated dedicated solutions to certain issues related to the reconstruction and rebuilding of Kryvyi Rih and Zaporizhzhia. As a result of the discussions, the young filmmakers offered 8 pitching ideas for future films. An experts panel and local citizens voted for the two best ideas. The participants had only three days to create two films about the development of their cities.

Alexa Luchayeva, a school student from Kryvyi Rih, worked with a team to make a film about the difficult history of renaming Sodruzhestvo Street in her city in honour of Oleksiy Riznychenko, a medic who died in the war. This process has been going on for over a year.

During the film production, Alexa tried to contribute in various areas – she was part of the camera crew, scriptwriting and film director’s team. Now she wants to continue exploring the wonderful world of cinema.

Sofia Babakova, a young filmmaker from Zaporizhzhia, was working on a film about the recovery of a destroyed house in her city and its history. She was a cameraman.

The young filmmakers presented the premieres of their films to the public on the red carpet in Kryvyi Rih and Zaporizhzhia. In the near future, these documentaries will go to the Irish Children’s Film Festival.

New Ukrainian and English language classes, an after-school care centre, a renovated gym and modern transparent doors in all classrooms. These are the results of the project called “Rebuilding Local Schools for Resilience” in the lyceum of Dorohynka village, Chernihiv region.

The project was implemented by the Brave to Rebuild Charitable Foundation within the framework of the U-LEAD with Europe Programme and with the financial support of the Commission’s European External Action Service (EEAS).

The school in Dorohynka was heavily damaged by Russian shells at the beginning of the war. Several classrooms were simply burnt out.

The school was one of the last of all twelve education facilities renovated under the project in Kyiv, Chernihiv and Kharkiv regions. The reconstruction was completed according to the Build Back Better principle.

Another part of our philosophy was to engage local communities to this cooperation. For instance, some of them took on the responsibility of removing garbage after repairs, and their residents volunteered to help out. Thus, people were jointly involved in improving the amenities of their community.

Early in February, an updated Telegram-bot called “Mothers, children, emotions. Manage your emotions so they do not manage you” is going to be released. It is intended for women with preschool children who need psychological support.

The chatbot was developed a year ago by Lada Mothers’ Generation CSO. The organisation is currently updating it to make it much better fit for current challenges as part of the EU-funded Phoenix project implemented by the East Europe Foundation.

Vitalina emphasised that today’s psychological state of mothers will affect children and society for generations to come. It is important to help mothers now, as their psychological state has an impact on both individual psychosomatic conditions and public health.

The chatbot ‘Mothers, children, emotions. Manage emotions so they do not manage you’ offers a test to identify the emotions that need to be addressed and provides practical tips and exercises from a professional psychologist. The test helps users choose the emotion they want to work on. After that, they can listen to a video lecture that provides basic information about the emotion.

In the initial version, the chatbot had six emotions, but now it will have 25. Of these, 16 are anger, guilt, fear, sadness, anxiety, shame, despair, envy, hatred, irritation, pity, and others that mothers may experience. In addition, 9 more difficult child emotions have been added so that mothers can better understand their reactions and know how to help them. Each video will also have a sign language translation. In addition, the bot will have a downloadable “Daily Exercises Guide” for working with emotions and will give access to the All-Ukrainian Database of free-of-charge Psychological Aid. If a person feels that he or she needs individual support from an expert, it will be enough to indicate the region, and the bot will suggest all the free offline and online opportunities nearby.

The chatbot is anonymous.

Along with practical improvements to the chatbot, the Lada Mothers’ Generation is also making technical improvements to it, which will allow it to collect more statistical data. Their review will help update the solution or develop new, set up automated correspondence depending on the responses from users, etc.

The Black Sea Globe exhibition was held in Odesa from January 13 to 26 featuring thematic maps created by children depicting marine biodiversity and its history.

The exhibition follows the activities undertaken by the attendees of the eponymous art and science school held in Odesa and Mykolaiv at the end of last year. It was there that 29 children aged 8 to 16 learned the art of map drawing. The school was organised by the EU/UNDP project called “EU for Improving Environmental Monitoring in the Black Sea” (EU4EMBLAS) in cooperation with the Dialogues creative space.

Who are Ukraine’s Black Sea neighbours? How can you tell the cardinal points on a map? How do marine species migrate in different seasons? Where does marine litter pile up? What are the historic sea trade routes? The scientists explained all this to the children offering them to choose one of the topics for their own map.

As a result of the training, the children created 31 maps showcased in the Black Sea Globe exhibition.

The children brought their dreams and hopes to their artwork.

Polina Fedorchenko from Odesa chose marine navigation as the theme of her map and showed the main Black Sea ports and trade routes.

Olena Marushevska notes that this is the second school organised as part of the project.

The first one, titled Black Sea Diary 2022, was held in Odesa. Its aim was to tell children about the Black Sea species and to encourage them to choose one of them for their own painting. As a result, the children spent 6 weeks working with scientists and artists to create their own story about marine life by intertwining scientific knowledge and emotions, which altogether had therapeutic effect. The school was attended mainly by displaced children from Mykolaiv, Kherson and Donetsk region. The activity culminated in an exhibition of the young artists’ works in a real art gallery with prizes and media interviews.

At that time, the exhibition received very favourable reviews from the public and even travelled to Romania, where it was presented at the Ovidius University in Constanta. In the letters attached to their works, the children wrote about their feelings: “The stingray should never be alone”, “If someone invades in its territory, the stone crab must drive them away”, “I wish the Black Sea to be demined”… The best artworks underpinned special Black Sea stamps issued in cooperation with Ukrposhta to mark the Black Sea Day.

After Odesa, the Black Sea Globe exhibition will move to Mykolaiv, where it will open on February 17.

The EU-funded COMPASA Project produced a brochure in January outlining the importance of introducing national criteria for state aid eligibility in Ukraine. The project is working with the Antimonopoly Committee to help it improve its competitive policy framework and state aid system in line with EU legislation and good practice.

These two areas are extremely important in terms of Ukraine’s fulfilment of its obligations under the Association Agreement and EU accession negotiations. State aid issues will be addressed in Chapter 8 of the negotiation process, Competition Policy. The European Commission’s report on Ukraine’s readiness for accession published at the end of last year found ‘limited progress’ in this area. So, there is still a lot of work to be done.

The new brochure emphasises that Ukraine should already be working on the implementation of national criteria for state aid eligibility, as their development and application is of paramount importance for the economy.

The project has been operational since June 2023 and is implemented by the consortium of WYG Consulting Ltd. and the Romanian Competition Council. COMPASA carries out analytical work and provides recommendations to the Antimonopoly Committee in the dedicated areas.