Bratislava, Slovakia
MS. YULIIA DIDYK: Administrator Power, good evening. Thank you so much for taking the time. It's really important for us Ukrainians. The first question is, the war has been going on for over a month and it's really terrifying. To be honest, maybe it's like a little bit my own opinion, but I don't think so, that Russian soldiers have left in Ukrainian cities like Bucha, [inaudible], and other Ukrainian cities, can never find understanding. What do you say to Russians’ aggression?
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Well, first of all, I think it's really important to take note of the fact that President Putin did this. President Putin inflicted this misery onto the Ukrainian people. He made this choice. There was no reason for this. He made up a set of lies, a set of fabrications to try to justify it. And they were baseless allegations. And I think one of the things that's very important is that the whole world knows this. Nobody has been fooled.
Indeed, even just in the last day or two, as you may know, the Russian Federation had the nerve to call for a UN Security Council session on the atrocities in Bucha to exclaim outrage that this horrible thing had happened and to pretend that it was something other than Russian forces. And Russia has tried that disinformation in the past, and sometimes that disinformation has been effective, but not this time because it is Ukrainians on the ground who are documenting the horrors that have been inflicted. It is the Ukrainian resistance, including the fighters, but all forms of resistance and volunteers who are fighting back. And it is Ukrainians like you outside of the country who are drawing attention to these crimes. So I think we have to make it very clear where accountability lies. And as President Biden has said, the record to establish justice is being built right now. And we and all of our allies and partners will stand behind the Ukrainian government as they push for accountability for these horrific war crimes.
MS. DIDYK: Thank you. As you know, more than three million people have been forced to leave Ukraine. We know about United States help for Ukraine in form of direct finances. Then we speak about refugees. Can they expect direct support from the United States too?
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Well, I think, first of all, I visited with refugees on two occasions in Poland, two trips to Poland. This is my first trip to Slovakia, and my main message on behalf of the American people is just thank you. Thank you, Slovak people. Thank you to the people all along the Ukrainian border who have opened their hearts and their homes. Today, I was at a refugee center here where an old, unused bus station has been converted into a reception center. And you have companies who have donated furniture. You have a telephone company that has donated SIM cards for the phones; you have the developer himself who could have made a lot of money out of that building who's decided to give this building over to the refugees, so that generosity is incredibly important.
I think then the next layer of assistance has come from the governments, from municipal officials, and from state governments backed by the European Union, and then the United States, as well is supporting refugees all across the frontline states through for example, UNHCR and other international organizations. I'll be traveling actually tomorrow to Moldova, where there have been real challenges for Moldova in having to absorb so many refugees, just as Slovakia has taken more than 300,000 people across its borders.
So I think what President Biden has made clear is we all have to chip in. Many American citizens are donating to these international organizations that are in turn providing support, whether inside Ukraine or in countries like Slovakia. And we know that the needs, which are very significant right now, are going to become even more significant over time as people run out of the resources that they might have brought with them when they first crossed the international border. So we need to be patient and we need to be exceptionally generous and find more resources, even when some people might begin to say, well, you know, it's too much already. It's never too much when people are unjustifiably attacked like this.
MS. DIDYK: So if you said something about Moldova, I want to ask: countries neighboring Ukraine do not always have enough finances, opportunities to receive millions of refugees. Today you are here in Slovakia, and the Slovak Republic does its best to offer its maximum support to the refugees in need. However, Slovakia, which also needs help in regulating, you know, the refugee wave. Even more complicated situation is in Moldova, where you are going next. So does the United States have any support program for Slovakia and other countries like maybe something specific?
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Well, let me sort of distinguish forms of assistance. So the kind of assistance you're talking about is humanitarian assistance. And again, I want to say that within that, there's money and support in order to live. But there's also these legal changes that have been made that allow the refugees to attend school, to be able to access healthcare, to be able to work. These are very unusual rule changes that a lot of refugees in the past have not been able to benefit from. And so again, we tip our hats to the Slovak government and all the governments along the borders that are allowing refugees the ability also to fend for themselves. It will take time. And many of the refugees, as you know best, are so traumatized by what they are escaping, are so traumatized by the family members that they've left behind, that this may not be the time where they want to begin to work, so they need the financial support before they are able to access employment and while they're getting their kids settled in school.
There are other forms of assistance as well, though, besides the humanitarian. So, for example, Moldova has lost a very significant export market, which was Russia and Ukraine. Both have been kind of taken offline by this horrific invasion. And so part of the reason that I am traveling to Moldova, with my European colleagues, to think through, how can we help Moldova find additional export markets? How can we help them place goods that might once have gone to Russia or Ukraine, now for the time being can't? But the farmers and the entrepreneurs who made those goods still need someplace in order to be able to sell them. So I think we have to think about the broad scope of assistance, which includes legal changes in support of the refugees, humanitarian assistance of the kind that we provide to UNHCR that hopefully will provide refugees with cash, and then these other forms of assistance. And in that last category, we also provide assistance to those who are fighting disinformation. And that is something that I think is worth just spending a second on.
I mean, here in Slovakia, the Russian Federation over a very, very long period of time has spent tens of millions, hundreds of millions of euros investing in building a misinformation apparatus, and often the reporting, the accounts that they offer may sound credible. You think to yourself, well why would somebody on television just be telling a lie? And I've asked myself the same question. Seems very, very strange to get up in the morning and say, I'm just going to make stuff up on TV, but that is what has been happening in Slovakia for a really long time. I think what I'm hopeful about is that now that the information out of Ukraine has been so well documented, now that journalists from Slovakia, for example, are present inside Ukraine, bringing those stories home to the public, that perhaps it will be possible to return to a more fact-based, evidence-based, truth-based media ecosystem because in order for citizens to make judgments about what policies to support or what government officials to hold accountable, it's really important that they be able to do so on the basis of facts. And so I think the more that this horrible war causes people to just say, hmm, just because I see something on television doesn't mean it's necessarily true, that can be an important recipe for a more truth-based foundation for public debate and discourse here in Slovakia.
MS. DIDYK: You know, you are right about the information [inaudible], and it's really bad situations in Russia with this and in Slovak Republic, too. And what do you think? How we, like younger generation, like young journalists, I want to ask you, how I might -- can fight with this because, like maybe a little bit personal, but I really had enough of it.
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Yeah, well that makes two of us. I've had enough of it, too, and above all, I think the people of Ukraine across the board, given that they are now being subjected to such brutality and such horrific atrocities, misinformation can lead very often to violence. You can see President Putin using these lies to try to motivate his own forces to themselves commit the very atrocities that he is pretending that Ukrainians have committed. And if you are a Russian soldier and you have been told, well, there's a bunch of Nazis over there and even the women and children, you know, they're female Nazis or they're future Nazis that becomes part of what you use to get your soldiers to do unspeakable things and to commit the kinds of horrific crimes that we warned would be committed because we had evidence of this in advance of the war and now that we see the Ukrainian people being victimized by it.
When you ask, what can young people do? I think that's the key question, right? You are the future. And for starters, going into journalism and practicing fact-based journalism in the way that you are doing, I think, is incredibly important, but also across the board, bringing a kind of skepticism, a healthy skepticism to news reports where you say, well, okay, just because somebody says it on TV doesn't make it true; just because I'm seeing it on Facebook doesn't make it true. And so what I know a number of schools, even here in Slovakia, are trying to teach is what they call media literacy.
MS. DIDYK: Yes.
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Yeah, it's -- again, we used to do computer literacy. Now it's media literacy, but what it really is about is kind of critical thinking. It's just not to accept that just because an authority figure says something that makes it true. Now the problem is that sometimes, when one starts to think too critically, one starts to believe there's no such thing as truth. There's no such thing as facts. But that's also a very dangerous place to go because there are facts. You know, the earth is round it turns out. Black is black. White is white. White is not black. Black is not white. Up is not down. But there is an entire media apparatus that is designed to argue that up is down and again fact-based rebuttals. We at USAID are funding independent media. Indeed, we are working with the Slovak government that is also very interested in supporting independent journalists, supporting anti-corruption investigations. But the main thing is we need citizens and journalists to be in a position to hold public officials in all countries, including the United States, accountable, accountable to the facts, accountable to the citizens on whether or not we, as government officials, are delivering for our people.
MS. DIDYK: Administrator Power, you know the need for humanitarian and financial help is bigger every day and you said it, and Ukrainians are worried that the world will get used to the war. Will the United States stand by the Ukrainians or the intensity of the support? Will that reaction decline?
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: I think, first of all, what has happened in the United States in terms of immunity in our citizenry is a lot like what has happened in Europe. The question of refugees and migration used to be very divisive here in Europe, also in the United States. But this may be the only thing that everyone in America can agree upon is the importance of standing with the Ukrainian people and not only the Ukrainian people, but also the importance of standing with countries like Slovakia that are on the frontlines. And so, so far, that has produced everything from $1.65 billion worth of security assistance from the United States that has been announced. Plus, President Biden's own announcement that we are prepared to provide up to a billion dollars in humanitarian assistance. And I think that that commitment is real.
We've just passed a large supplemental funding bill for Ukraine, which again, will go to people inside Ukraine, but also to those who flee. And already up on Capitol Hill in our Congress, there's talk of, well, when will we need to look for more resources? So I think you can count on the American people standing with the people of Ukraine. But again, it continues to be very important that Ukrainian voices are heard because the most powerful motivator for us in the United States, for all democracies around the world, is seeing you, your people, their bravery, their dedication to these values.
I mean, you, as you've heard, have reminded people in democracies all around the world what we believe in. But it took you having to fight for those beliefs and those values to really drive those principles home. And so again, my job as USAID Administrator, is to make sure I'm doing everything in my power, and my agency is, to ensure that Ukrainian journalists, Ukrainian first responders, Ukrainian medics, Ukrainian soldiers, that Ukrainian voices remain very loud on the global stage.
MS. DIDYK: Administrator Power, I am a Ukrainian. I studied journalism at Comenius University in Bratislava. Together with other students, we are preparing Ukrainian news and we are really glad that we have this opportunity to help Ukrainian people stay informed. And it's really important. What would you say to other Ukrainian viewers who fled to the Slovak Republic?
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Well, first I would say, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that this is happening to you. No citizen, no person, no family deserves what is being inflicted upon you. Nobody should ever have to flee their home. Nobody wants to flee their home. And I've heard from refugees that I've met in Poland and here in Slovakia, just that longing to go home, that longing even to be able to rebuild, to be able to [inaudible], to be able to see one's neighbors, one's loved ones, nobody should have to go through what the Ukrainians are going through. The other thing I would say is take advantage of the opportunity to be here in these other countries, to take advantage of the educational opportunities that exist. And, you know, don't freeze time. You know, don't take a time-out on your kids' education. Or if you need to find healthcare, take advantage, again, of what is being made available in these neighboring countries. But mainly, what I want to say to them is we, as the United States, are going to do everything in our power with other democracies to make sure that your time abroad is temporary and that you will be able to reach to achieve that dream of not only going home, but as President Biden likes to say, to build back better, you know, to rebuild what has been destroyed and to be the living example of why the fight for democracy and the rule of law is worth fighting for. That brighter future, that more prosperous future, that future of freedom and prosperity, which is just what President Putin launched this war to try to prevent. But we will stand with you until you obtain that future.
MS. DIDYK: I want to thank you.
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Of course.
MS. DIDYK: I would like to say thank you for your straightforward position about what the Russian army started against Ukraine and Ukrainian people. It's really very important for us, for all Ukrainians. We need your support right now. We need support from the whole world. And you know, we did not deserve this nightmare. We just want to live in our motherland, speak our native language, and stay independent. That's it. And I think we deserve it. Thank you so much.
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: You definitely do. Well said.