I set up a foundation in Ukraine, an Open Society foundation, 25 years ago, which is
actually before Ukraine became independent.
These 25 years of time were a time of developing a concept of Ukraine.
We started our independent path and the energy
of the civil society proved its capacity to defend these basic values and interests.
Through that period, we had different understandings and different visions of what the civil society is.
And the foundation was actually changing and evolving during that period.
What we tried to do is to transform this energy and capacity into sustainable capacity of
the society to act for the sake of its own interests.
The foundation has developed the democratic open society in Ukraine. This is where we
are now, as a part of the civil society.
We have enormous expertise from our boards.
We have the benefit of being a part of a big network, which is international. And at the
same time, we are a national legal entity and we are perceived as a Ukrainian organization.
Very often we are a catalyst for ideas. Very often we are a resource for having the
ideas implemented in practice. Very often we are a partner, a donor, an entity which
is a physical, safe, tolerant, and inclusive space where many interests and many views
can try to formulate and crystallize this vision—what is that they actually want to achieve.
George Soros has a profound amount of credibility
vis-à-vis Ukraine. He tried to establish institutions that will play by particular
rules of the game that are fair, that are equitable, that are just.
What is extremely important is: the idea of a new Ukraine came from George.
When he saw that there is a place in the world where is a breakthrough of the ideas which
he was pushing for many decades, so that was a reason for him to be much interested.
Our foundation is the expert community that propose ideas, concepts, and attempt to implement
reforms—radical reforms in Ukraine. Real democratic reforms.
We have to reform our court, we have to establish independence for judiciary, and to also we
need to control and to monitor how these norms are implemented.
Accountability, anticorruption—this is the kind of attitudes and strategies people
want to be enforced.
We have been cooperating with the International Renaissance Foundation for a long time.
And thanks to this cooperation, in particular, the law “On Access to Court Decisions” appeared,
which gave everyone the opportunity to find and read any court decision through the internet.
They are trying to fund any actions related to their prosecution reform and reform all
judiciary as a whole. They are very active in Ukraine.
We have something like 500 grants to manage a year, but we want to see how we can contribute
beyond just being the source of funding.
We started to develop as a pilot project a
network of unpaid legal centers to consultate people on their rights, on their civic rights.
It added dignity for people.
The idea that citizens have access to lawyers
for basic civil needs and now criminal too was unheard of just a decade ago. The whole
idea of legal empowerment that’s now been taken over by the state and being paid for
by the state is a colossal achievement in Ukraine.
There is a new generation. Most of them joined civil society, so you have this very impressive
human capital, which is to a large extent, a product of the foundation.
We now have a much broader civil society than we had a few years ago. There is a lot of
self-reliance, there is a lot of self-identification of people as doers. If they see an issue,
they want to participate in addressing this. And I think this is the value of the foundation
and this is what makes it relevant to the society and to all of us.