For Ukrainians this War is Personal.

Speech delivered for business leaders at the Swiss Reception, St Gallen Symposium on March 16, 2022

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

First and foremost, thank you for giving me the floor. I was asked to share my personal story, how is it to live in a middle of a full-blown war provoked by the neighboring state – Russia. How my days look like and what is my future and the future of my family, aside from any political analysis. I would tell you straight away it is impossible. For Ukrainians this war is personal. One cannot separate the personal from the political. Only a successful war which expels the occupier from the land of the Ukrainian people, my people, can secure my family’s and my future.?

As a result of the war Ukrainians became one huge family. We are daily working through volunteer organizations purchasing protective kits for the armed forces. The tech community is helping government to protect our networks from cyber-attacks. Those who can use their voice and expertise speak internationally and fight on the information front. Everyone has a friend who has joined the territorial defence forces to pick up a weapon to defend our people, our land and our institutions. We are a family of proactive citizens that know how to exercise their civil rights, how to act and when needed to be part of the defence of our community.??

I’m one of those 40 million Ukrainians. I’ve been working in security and defence policies since 2012 and in the tech sector since 2019. It is therefore difficult to separate my personal work life from the political. In fact everything that has been happening in my homeland since 2014 affected me in professional and personal terms.?

In 2014 my family lost everything. I come from Donetsk. In 2014??Russia staged an occupation in my home city with the help of its??propaganda system, Russia’s forces and Russia’s proxies. They brought??war into my home city and to Ukraine. My brother joined the Ukrainian defence forces and served till last spring. He has served now longer in combat than any of the aged WW2 veterans who parade on Red Square on Victory Day. My parents lost our cozy apartment and moved to Kyiv. At that time as a security and defence professional based in Estonia I was doing everything possible so that the west clearly understands who is truly responsible for this war. Who is Russia and how it learned to manipulate the west. It was at that time I was awarded as a Leader of Tomorrow at St Gallen Symposium. And am happy to be here years later.?

The war Russia started against Ukraine in 2014 has never stopped. I decided to return to Ukraine in 2018 and do everything possible to make my country more resilient in face of Russia’s multiple threats in the information, cyber and kinetic space. I feel I can help as my background combines security and tech. These areas intersect at point where much of modern 21st?century conflict takes place. Building such resilience has become a nation building process and a unifying platform for Ukraine’s state building. For Ukraine’s truth rebirth began in 2014 when all Ukrainians decided to fight with their own blood for a modern European democratic path of development and not a Russian one.

And at 5:30 on February 24, I woke up from the sound of explosion and the words in my news?feed “Russia has invaded, we are at full scale war”. Russia cannot accept our democratically chosen European path. Therefore, it decided to use its only instrument of power – brutal force against me, my family, my country. These past days my brother has been fighting in heavy combat against Russian forces that bomb and shell civilians, destroy schools, maternity hospitals. We have now more civilian casualties than in the defence forces. It is state terrorism in 2022, it is crime against humanity, multiple war crimes and the crime of aggression, waging illegal war, what the Nuremburg called the greatest international crime. And we will document everyone of these crimes. I’m working on multiple platforms each day, explaining to international audiences that the war has nothing to do with Ukraine wanting to be a member of NATO. Until 2014 we were constitutionally netural, and Russia still attacked us. The issue for Moscow in 2014 and 2022 is the same, it is the Ukrainian commitment to democratic values and practices, free elections, rule of law and taking a path toward the European Union. It is for this choice that Russia attacks us.??Ukraine is now defending in blood the basic notion of democracy, its values and Europe..?

What I want to highlight here. Ukraine and Russia are profoundly different nations and states. It is important not to equalize us by any criteria. Yes, we have our problems and our flaws but are a fully functioning democracy, with regular transfer of power following elections and we have a well-organized civic activism. Ukrainians have already pushed for government changes by protests, active civic positions, by using voice and civil protest and in 2014 by losing lives and homes. We now face the greatest trial of our lives which is being met by an organized democratic society, its elected officials, its administration, armed forces, engaged civil society and active citizenry united in a common endeavor to ensure our democratic values and European path are sustained against an enemy determined to extinguish our democracy and that European path

What is so tragic that Russian society has been unable to develop a stronger democratic tradition and civil society. Instead the propaganda machine of the Russian state, Russian imperialism and the Soviet heritage have provided a platform for Vladimir Putin’s repeated aggression, against Georgia in 2008, in Ukraine in 2014, in Syria, in Libya, in Mali and now in Ukraine again. I hope one day Russia will change fundamentally but for now we need to focus on stopping this aggression and any further aggression. Sanctions are necessary to stop this war, and to stop it from spreading further into the rest of Europe.?

I urge you to keep a cold head and remember that my personal story cannot be isolated from the fight to bring back my country to safety where I want to live, contribute to its development, and export tech and security knowledge globally. Therefore, I’m staying here, where my parents are waking up at 5 am from air raid alerts, where we are checking every hour whether my brother is ok while putting his life at risk in mortal combat. What the west can do is to keep isolating Russia, raise the cost of the war to Moscow and exhaust its capacity to continue destroying my beloved Kyiv where the subway station 500 meters from my house was bombed yesterday

This is Russia’s barbaric war, and it has to be stopped.?

By Anna Bulakh, Leader of Tomorrow Award, St Gallen Symposium in 2015