At the New Year’s Eve we decided to talk about future with a competent person. Oksana Bilozir is a symbol of everything Ukrainian inside and outside of the country. She is also a member of parliament and a people’s singer.  Her reputation has been consolidated in the course of time and the number of her fans is only growing. That is why she is a hero of the New Year’s cover.

“We should figure out what values we need”

- Dear Oksana, Ukraine is the largest country on post-Soviet space. Our culture, mentality, history and resources prove that we have the right to become a full EU member now. Moreover, in 2005, it seemed that we were so close to this goal. But then, the situation got “frozen”. Is this just a bad luck pertaining to our politicians?

- I would not say that politicians are our single problem. After the Orange Revolution (I call these events this way), people, the whole society started to change. I went through all that political campaign with one key thesis: Our fear strengthens our authorities, while their fear strengthens us.  Starting from that point, when this thesis was adopted, people began to understand how the society and the authorities depend on each other. And this is a normal European civilization formula. When we understood that, the fear was gone and we realized that we were Europeans to a large extent. But in order to become Europeans in the sense of mentality, we should figure out what values are important for us, what authorities we need. Only when these values are adopted and the politicians who support them are chosen, we will live in the society we dream of. And these processes are going on.

- The whole world knows you as a famous artist and politician who defends national interests of Ukraine. Is it true that Europe’s attitude to Ukraine is quite tense today? For example, it is extremely hard to obtain a Schengen visa these days.

- It would be more correct to say that Europeans treat our authorities in a tense way, but not Ukrainians in general. As of visa issues, this problem hasn’t appeared just recently. It arouse because of illegal migration of workers who break the laws of Schengen zone. Currently, more than 6.5 million of our citizens are living abroad (this is an official figure provided by European countries). And even though a lot of Ukrainians visited Europe with legal visas and got legal jobs, some of them still came there illegally. This is one of the key factors that influence the migration policy between us and Europe. But is should be highlighted that several years ago EU decided to ease this tension. For a number of categories of our citizens, like scholars, journalists, and students, visas have become easier to obtain. As of today, the negotiations regarding this issue are quite productive, and I believe that they will end well, although, the positive decision will not be reached as fast as we want.

- You travel a lot and you have an opportunity to speak not only to ordinary people, but also statesmen and public persons. Could you say whether the attitude towards Ukraine has changed during the past two years?

- It changes all the time as in the informational society news reach millions of people in a minute. Thus, everything affects the attitude towards us: politics, economy, cultural and social links. During a roundtable in Italy, I once said: “Do you know that there are 350 000 Ukrainians living in Rome and in the adjacent area, although, according to the official statistics, there are only 50 000 of them?” Italians started to worry. They got afraid that these people live practically unnoticed, but still they ate something, like bread and butter, thus, the local budget should have been changed to meet their needs. They considered it an economic problem that needed a solution.

The same way, scandalous news from Ukraine trigger a reaction in Europe, especially, before EURO-2012.

To be continued...