On 14 December, Voronezh State University housed a discussion “Russia–West” with the participation of Claire Daly, a deputy of the European Parliament, and Ulrich Heiden, a journalist from Germany. The meeting was initiated by students from the Faculty of Romance and Germanic Philology and was organised as part of the development of programme to train specialists in the area of promotion of social and cultural initiatives.
The main issue discussed during the meeting was searching for opportunities to reach a common understanding between nations in the context of constant media war which is expressed in shaping a negative image of Russia on the international media scene.
When discussing the political situation, students assumed that Russia is viewed as a threat to the established democratic order due to cut-throat competition on the global market. Claire Daly supported this assumption, however, she pointed out that this is not a dead-end situation, everything can change thanks to accumulating international contacts between Europe and Russia, especially on the cultural level. Such dialogue between Russia and some members of the European Union can contribute to changing the image of Russia in the nearest future.
Ulrich Heiden, German journalist, writer, and documentary film director, continued the discussion dedicated to the freedom of speech. As an example he used the censorship of German information space due to the blocking and later removal of the YouTube-channel RT DE, which was popular in Germany and was used as a public platform where people could criticise the activities of the government both in global affairs and domestic policies. In opinion of the German journalist, such aggressive actions interfere with the harmonic development of relations between Russia and the western countries.
“It appealed to me that the speakers told us about their personal attitude to the discussed events. They shared their experiences and talked about the difficulties that they have been running into in an attempt to highlight the issues of censorship and anti-Russian policies in the EU. They also answered the questions of students and other participants of the discussion. I think we managed to establish a successful dialogue on the individual level,” said Yulia Belousova, a fourth year student from the Faculty of Romance and Germanic Philology.
The participants of the event expressed their hope that VSU might become a platform which will contribute to the dialogue between like-minded people from different countries. They also supported the idea of creating a permanent discussion platform.
