18/11/2025
"Dear friends of Kyiv Dialogue, dear members of the European Parliament, dear Mr Ambassador, and a very, very warm welcome to our colleagues and friends from Ukraine – Lutsk, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Kyiv. Thank you for making the long way and joining us in Berlin today.
We gather here in the hardest and darkest times since the very existence of independent Ukraine and since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022.
Our thoughts are with all those who suffer from the hardship of the war.
Who have lost their beloved ones.
Who live in fear.
Who have lost the security of their daily lives and the predictability of their future.
Believe us, our partners who came from Ukraine – you have friends in Germany
who feel your pain,
who hear the outcry for justice.
Who struggle altogether with you to bring this broken world back into its good order.
We are gathering today in Berlin to think deeper about local democracy, about war, but also to celebrate the 20th anniversary of our common meeting place, of the .
Allow me a brief look back: In November 2004 I received a telephone call from Katja Petrowskaja. She told me: “Stefanie – there is a revolution going on. In Ukraine. Nobody in Germany understands what that means. We have to do something”.
So we met in the kitchen of Katja and Tobias Münchmeyer. All good stories seem to start somehow in a kitchen.
And we initiated the Kyiv Dialogue. Slowly – step by step, meeting for meeting, conference for conference – trying to move Ukraine more in the field of German perception of Europe. It was a time when Central Europe had two simultaneous translators from Ukraine to German: Nadja Simon in Köln and Juri Durkot in Lviv. We used to organise the annual conferences not according to the calendar of our politicians but to the ones of Nadja and Juri.
This was a very specific period. The emergence of a country in the European public awareness. We were witnesses – and small participants. Karl Schlögel wrote about this historical process when Europe started to perceive Ukraine as a state - wonderful books with deep knowledge and with the due modesty and humbleness.
We worked slowly – with an annual budget that was around the price for a small used car. I must admit that we did not achieve any quick successes. It was more of a slow, persistent, and unspectacular process. But the advantage was that we were able to build up a good – and as it proved later – a quite reliable network of contacts over a long period of time in relative peace and quiet.
And we thought we had so much time.
We did not. We were mistaken. The Kremlin had its plans for Ukraine already prepared. And Germany and Europe all too long continued to feed the dragon.
When Russia staged the war against Ukraine in 2014 we had at least a solid basis and the understanding how to set up what would later become the country-wide network of more than 40 communities and hundreds of activists engaged in developing local democracy all over the country. The Federal Foreign Office supported this effort financially, and the International Renaissance Foundation became our strong and reliable partner in Ukraine.
But much too early - in March 2022 with the full scale invasion we had to close our office in Kyiv.
We shifted our efforts to urgent humanitarian help for IDPs.
And since 2023, Kyiv Dialogue works persistently on the inclusion of the local level communities into the decision-making structures of the international recovery as enshrined in the Ukraine plan and the Ukraine facility.
Kyiv Dialogue is about ideas and about making them reality.
But most of all Kyiv Dialogue is about people.
I want to take the opportunity and express my deep gratitude to all those who made the Kyiv Dialogue for years to the unique German Ukrainian civil society platform.
Yevhen Bystricki and Oksana Dashchakivska from the International Renaissance Foundation in Kyiv and Lviv
Iryna Haiduchyk from Institut Pravo from Luck – Iryna – you stand pars pro toto – one for all our regional partners from the network that covered Ukrainian cities from Luck to Sloviansk and Mariupol so many of them cannot be with us here today! Thank you for being here, Iryna.
Kyiv Dialogue has a wonderful Board of experts. Don’t be afraid – I will not mention all of its members over the twenty years. But the very first people who lent us their trust were Volker Rühe, the former Minister of Defence, Katrin Göring-Eckardt, the former Vice President of the German Bundestag, the famous writer Juri Andruchovych, the late philosopher Myroslav Popovych, and Rebecca Harms, the former chair of the Greens/EFA in the European Parliament who is with us today. You also stand pars pro toto.
Thank you for the time, the energy, and the support you have devoted to Kyiv Dialogue!
Kyiv Dialogue would be nothing without those who did the daily work for years. And again I mention pars pro toto only Nataliya Pryhornytska, Oleksandra Bienert, Lydija Hutnyk, and Tetiana Lopashchuk, who lead the Berlin and Kyiv offices in the years of the big networking.
Thank you for your support. Thank you for being with us.
I wish all of us very good discussions today and tomorrow."
Stefanie Schiffer, director of Europäischer Austausch - European Exchange, opening the 20th
Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung
Міжнародний фонд "Відродження"
Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung
Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit
Stiftung für deutsch-polnische Zusammenarbeit
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Osteuropakunde
Bertelsmann Stiftung
European Centre for Press and Media Freedom ECPMF
EVZ Foundation
