Ukraine and its European Partners after two Years of War
About the Event
Join Daniela Prugger and Igor Mitchnik who last spoke to us two years ago to hear about the situation on the ground in Ukraine and how things have developed since February 2022.
About the Speakers
Daniela Prugger has been working as a journalist in Ukraine for five years. Since the start of the Russian invasion on 24 February 2022, she has been reporting on the nationwide fighting and the humanitarian situation as a freelance correspondent for the Austrian daily newspaper "Der Standard," Ö1 Radio, and "WOZ" in Switzerland. In 2023, she received the "Award for Outstanding Journalism in Memory of Claus Gatterer" for her work. Among others, her reports for print and radio have taken her to the underground stations in the city of Kharkiv, where many residents held out during the first months of the war. She accompanied mine troops near Isjum, female doctors in a damaged hospital in the village of Solotschiw north-east of Kharkiv, not far from the border with Russia, as well as families who had fled to villages near Bachmut when the city was still under Ukrainian control. One week after the recapture of the city of Kherson in November 2022, she experienced the euphoric mood on the ground and the uncertainty in which people continued to live despite the liberation - because the attackers were still only a few kilometers away, on the other side of the Dnipro River. On the first anniversary of the war, she visited war widows in the Ukrainian capital. In June 2023, the Kakhovka Dam in Southern Ukraine was destroyed. A week later, Prugger reported from the areas affected by the flood in the regions of Mykolaiv and Kherson. In the summer of 2023, she visited several rehabilitation centers in Lviv and Kharkiv and spoke to wounded soldiers there. Thousands have lost limbs in the fighting and are now waiting for prostheses. In November 2023, she traveled to the Sumy region northeast of Kyiv, near the Russian border. There, she spoke to people who had fled on foot via what is currently the only humanitarian corridor between the two warring parties.
Igor Mitchnik serves as the Executive Director of Austausch e.V., a Berlin-based NGO focusing on civil society and conflict management initiatives in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the South Caucasus since the 1990s. Operating primarily from Ukraine since 2019, he has been actively involved in civil society, humanitarian, and analytical projects. Following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and before returning to Berlin in February 2024, he concentrated on the humanitarian sector, collaborating with international organizations such as Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE) and Mercy Corps. Until recently he was based in the city of Dnipro. He holds a double master's degree in Politics and Security from Tartu, Estonia, and University College London, UK.