Editor’s Note: Updated with video on 12 February. 

Last night the Lib Dem European Group hosted an event with the leader of Ukraine’s Holos Party, Kira Rudik. Holos is one of five parties now in ALDE and was the first liberal party to gain seats in the Ukrainian Parliament.

LDEG have now put the video on their You Tube channel.

If you haven’t got time to watch it now, here are some of the highlights of Kira’s conversation with former Lib Dem President and vice President of ALDE, Sal Brinton. But do go back and watch it when you can.

russia’s war has shaken up world order. In our path to victory, we have a chance to strengthen global security and defend democratic values. I talked about a historic challenge of keeping unity with @SalBrinton.@RobHarrison_EU @ALDE @Libdem @LibDemEurope pic.twitter.com/qEzinRWQ3M

— Kira Rudik (@kiraincongress) February 9, 2023

Kira first appeared at Lib Dem Spring Conference last year, just 18 days after the invasion. She talked then about how she would never have expected to be learning how to fire a rifle and described her 2 hour daily Kalashnikov training as “a hell of a workout.” At that point she was wanting the international community to give Ukraine a chance against the Russian invaders.

Almost a year later, she talked about what life was like in Ukraine. Certainly they had held off the Russians and had even taken ground back off them, but they had lost 50 % of their energy infrastructure.

They can produce enough energy but can’t distribute it. They make sure that critical infrastructure like hospitals have what they need – the rest, she says, they figure it out as the go along. They  have electricity outages which have impact on water supplies and heating. In Ukraine’s freezing Winter, the  priority is heating, then running water then electricity. She said that when you wake up, you check if your phone is charged, if you have heat, it’s 50/50 if you have running water. You need water stored everywhere at home as you may not have it for 2-3 days at a time.

Her friend has a toddler and they live on 13th floor.  With no working lift, she phoned Kira in tears after she left her apartment keys in the car and had to go all the way back down.

She described that when she does sleep in her own bed rather than an air raid shelter, she has the window open so that she can hear the air raid sirens.

But the way they are living in Kyiv is super luxury compared to Odessa where they had no electricity for 5 days. Kherson she described as a humanitarian catastrophe.

“The fuel we are running on is hope” she said. Grateful for the support from the west, she acknowledges that they didn’t think that they would last a year.

Boris Johnson, she said, was a hero in Ukraine, even if his personality is  “iffy” in the U.K. She said that Boris Johnson burgers are being sold all over Ukraine in big restaurants and small.

The big worry now is that there’s going to be a massive Russian Spring offensive. They expect major attack on the first anniversary of the invasion.

This is why the planes that Zelensky keeps asking for are so important:

If we get jets we get another layer of security and ability to intercept the missiles to make sure the people who are fighting have less chance to die tomorrow

Not because we want or like fighter jets – they are a matter of life and death for us

It’s still, she said,  David vs Goliath and you have to be smarter, more modern, faster,to stay ahead.

One of her focuses now is trying to get countries to legislate to seize Russian assets and give them to Ukraine to help the rebuild.

Her thoughts are with  people worse off. They have been setting up unbreakability shelters where people can charge phones and get warm tea but the challenge is to.figure out how to help the people who can’t get out of their apartments.

Asked about what Ukrainians need, one of the things that she mentioned as an animal lover was veterinary supplies of all sorts. She is an animal lover who runs a shelter for 70 cats. There are enough big veterinary companies in the UK who could surely be persuaded by their customers to get on with this.

Incredibly, despite all that is going on around them, Holos is still doing progressive things. Ukraine is still pretty socially conservative, but when Holos proposed that Ukraine ratify the Istanbul Convention on violence against women, Zelensky’s party supported it. Note, the UK has yet to do so.

Kira talked about her international travels and how things appear outside what she described as the “democratic bubble.”

Our view of the world and human rights is far from universal. Russian propaganda is very strong in African countries who distrust the west.

She says that they were lucky that Zelensky was in his position when Russia invaded. We needed someone to tell our story, she said and Zelensky is so good at appealing to people’s emotions.

Sal talked about the Parliamentary Debate today when Lib Dem Peer Jeremy Purvis called for the Ukrainian parliament to be awarded the George Cross for bravery just like the people of Malta were during the second world war.

During the debate, Sal raised the horrific issue of abducted children and told how 300 babies were taken from Maruipol and adopted in Russia.

The truly horrific thing is that older children will be conscripted to fight for Russia in Ukraine when they reach adulthood.

However, she said that Putin has united Europe, not just the EU, against him.

You really need to watch the recording to marvel at the strength, resilience, positivity and sparkle that Kira has after a year of the most stressful circumstances imaginable.  She is an incredibly charismatic, articulate and warm person.

It’s quite an achievement for LDEG to organise this event so it is definitely worth your while joining them.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings