It’s a simple question asked by Ivan Fedorov. “Can you imagine war coming to you?” he asks in a conference room in Brussels. The audience falls silent, irritated, so the young man repeats, “Can you imagine war coming to you?” When some of the audience, made up of journalists and employees of think tanks, shake their heads, Fedorov says: “It was the same for us in Ukraine, until February 24.”
Fedorov’s message was that if EU members did not help Ukraine defeat the Russian army and stop Vladimir Putin, war would soon reach the EU. The 33-year-old knows exactly what misery war brings. He has been mayor of Melitopol since 2020, and after the Russian army occupied the city in southern Ukraine, he was kidnapped with a plastic bag over his head and interrogated for days. He was later released in a prisoner exchange.
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Because the kidnapping made him known around the world and his city is still occupied, Fedorov travels through Europe’s capitals with two Ukrainian MPs and campaigns for help for Ukraine. In Rome they invited Pope Francis to Kyiv, from Brussels they went to Berlin via The Hague. The message there is likely to be similar to that before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament: “Ukrainian families are not thinking about comfort, they are thinking about their survival. This has to stop, and as soon as possible and with all the options like sanctions and weapons.” Ukraine must win this war and time is of the essence.
“It quickly became clear to me that the Russian occupiers don’t care about a single life.”
At the invitation of the Slovak think tank Globsec Fedorov and the deputy Maria Mezentseva from Kharkiv describe what they experienced in the first two months of the war. “It quickly became clear to me that the Russian occupiers didn’t care about a single life,” the mayor recalls. He always expected that he could be taken out of the cell and killed. It was similarly stressful not being able to speak to either his family or his employees.
He was accused of supporting a Ukrainian far-right organization. He was released after four days, but he cannot return to his city. Of the 150,000 people who lived in Melitopol before the invasion, 70,000 are still there – but Russia is refusing humanitarian aid or evacuations. Fedorov tries to help from afar and he is proud that the citizens of his city protested against the occupiers.
Melitopol’s Mayor Ivan Fedorov with Pope Francis in the Vatican. Together with MPs Olena Khomenko (back left) and Maria Mezentseva, he wants to draw attention to the atrocities in Ukraine.
(Photo: AFP)
The soldiers who held him told him they had to cleanse Ukraine of Nazis and make sure native Russian speakers weren’t harassed and oppressed. “That’s absurd. We don’t have Nazis in Ukraine, we have patriots, and the suppression of the Russian language is simply a fairy tale,” says Fedorov, shaking his head. He doesn’t appear desperate, instead he is full of energy and focused on shaking up Europeans and helping his country.
The same applies to Maria Mezentseva, who has been a member of the parliament in Kyiv for President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s party since 2019 and has her constituency in the metropolis of Kharkiv near the Russian border. Although 300,000 people have fled from the Donbass region to Kharkiv since 2014 and some relatives have fought and will fight there, she too could not imagine an invasion by Russia and was not prepared. She reports that her family’s home was recently hit by six Russian shells Degree-shot down multiple rocket launchers.
“They eat dog and cat food and drink from toilet bowls to survive”
She talks routinely about the weapons that are now necessary. Heavy artillery is particularly important, such as multiple rocket launchers. “We could win back Mariupol with that,” she says of the besieged port city, which is the “heart of Ukraine”: “As long as it’s still beating, we’re alive.” The deputy urges speed. Every day is crucial – regardless of whether it’s about the delivery of military equipment or sanctions. “It’s nice that you’re not using Russian oil, but why only after August?” she asks. She vividly describes the situation in Mariupol: “The civilians there eat dog and cat food and drink from the toilet bowl to survive.”
Mezentseva explains why the members of NATO and the EU are now delivering more heavy weapons (“more are coming every day”): because of the pictures from the Ukrainian city of Bucha, where murdered civilians were found after the Russian army withdrew. She thinks it’s good when politicians reveal as little as possible about military aid for their country – and then praises Italy, which is currently very committed. Groups were formed in the Ukrainian parliament that maintained contact with individual national parliaments. This is how you want to forge alliances in a targeted manner. It’s important to Mezentseva that democracy works in her country: “We meet in Kyiv every week and vote, although that makes us a target for the Russians.”
She proudly points out that President Zelenskij already filled out the first part of the questionnaire to the EU ambassador in Kyiv handed over to Ukraine for EU membership. The presidential administration hopes that Ukraine could be granted candidate status at the regular EU summit at the end of June – which would be a symbolically important step. Mezentseva emphasizes that people in Kyiv know that EU accession is a “long and bumpy road” that will take many years: “We don’t want to be a member tomorrow, we want to meet all the requirements.” Kyiv also knows that every EU country has a right of veto.
All of this is a dream of the future anyway, the focus is on self-defense and a weakening of Russia. The Ukrainian MP Olena Khomenko explains in the European Parliament what else could help. She calls for further sanctions against Belarus because the country continues to support Russia’s war of aggression. And EU members should expel even more Russian diplomats – preferably also ambassadors, as Lithuania has done. And the EU should put additional entrepreneurs and politicians from Russia and their families on the sanctions list because they would support “Putin’s regime and his crimes.” The same should also apply to artists or influencers from Russia if they spread disinformation about the war.