Ukraine’s NATO membership is gaining increasingly more importance and is constantly being discussed in Ukrainian society, so a group of high school seniors decided to keep abreast of the times and demonstrate their views. Students from the Ukrainian Humanitarian Lyceum, which is associated with Shevchenko Kyiv National University, recently completed a research project. Entitled “Ukraine and NATO: Pros and Cons,” it presents all the advantages and disadvantages of our country’s entry into NATO.
The students’ work, which lasted over six months-from March through September, involved analyzing publications about NATO, scouring the Internet, and reading articles in the mass media. Halyna Sazonenko, the principle of the lyceum, who is a Merited Teacher of Ukraine and has a PhD in education, said that the most difficult part of the project was working in groups.
“The students had to study aspects of NATO membership according to their specializations: philology, history, and philosophy, economics, and law. But they quickly sorted things out and tackled their respective tasks. Some students did street interviews to find out people’s attitudes to Ukraine’s accession to NATO. They filmed the interviews and produced an interesting video. Another group studied survey results obtained by various sociological services, while other students studied what representatives of youth subcultures think of NATO.”
A few days ago the students reported their findings at the Teacher’s House in the form of a concert. Through engaging and humorous sketches they dispelled myths about NATO that are current in Ukraine and which, in their opinion, have the largest impact on the population’s attitude to the Alliance. For example, there is a myth that Ukrainian soldiers will have to fight in different parts of the world, defending American interests, which the students rebutted with the fact that our military men are already present in many of the world’s hotspots, defending things that are not connected to the US.
Countering the myth that Ukraine can forget about NATO membership until 2017, when the Russian fleet leaves Sevastopil, the students provided data on the fact that the presence of the Russian military base does not prevent Ukraine from moving toward NATO.
Experts may deem such opinions naive and childish, but everyone is entitled to their opinion, especially young people. The lyceum students did not neglect to examine the question of NATO membership’s pluses and minuses.
“One way or another, Ukraine needs changes. In our opinion, we have the best chances to do this by joining the Alliance,” explained Anna Vdovychenko, a third-year student at the lyceum. “We have to convince the population that NATO membership will enable Ukraine to participate in international production processes, attract more foreign investments, and join countries with democratic values. Therefore, we need to dispel the old stereotypes that Ukrainians have concerning this issue and prove that freedom, democracy, rule of law, and market economy are the main advantages of NATO membership. The only downside is that Ukraine’s relations with Russia will deteriorate.”
Scholars who attended the NATO concert noted that these kinds of student forums need to be brought to the public because they will produce a radical turnaround in attitudes toward the Alliance. As the students say, many Ukrainians are simply not aware of the changes that will take place in Ukraine after it joins NATO.
They have an abundance of arguments in favor of their country joining the Alliance: guarantees of national security, an effective national defense sector, government transparency, and economic stability. At the same time, the students did not shy away from speaking out about the negative consequences of joining the Alliance, in particular a possible increase in social tensions, reductions in military contracts from Russia, and limited discretion in foreign and military policy matters.
Nonetheless, the students believe that if young people say yes to NATO now, they will do everything they can to make Ukraine become a member.
