Tag Archives: holos

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.