When asked what he’ll miss most about his three years as Sweden’s ambassador to Ukraine, Martin Hagstrom’s response was quick and decisive: traveling around Ukraine.
He’s been to every oblast except Ternopil, which he plans to visit before Stockholm calls him back to the Foreign Ministry for reassignment in August. His successor has not been named yet.
Despite his extensive travels, he wishes he would have gone to even more places.
“That’s something I really enjoyed and will miss — meeting with active Ukrainians. When you meet with people who are engaged in many different projects and who are actively trying to change things, it’s very rewarding. It’s a very beautiful country and I have not seen enough of it.”
In the could-have-been-better category, Hagstrom said he had hoped for greater economic ties between the two nations.
“I would have been very happy to have seen more progress in business relations,” Hagstrom said. The longstanding problem deterring more Swedish investment is that “Ukraine has not managed to stay the course,” the ambassador said. “That means companies are wary and, during an election year, companies with some experience in the market know changes are possible if you look at the past.”
Encouragingly, he said it appears that President-elect Volodymyr Zelenskiy — who will be inaugurated on May 20 — will keep the country on the course of European Union integration, which Hagstrom believes offers Ukraine the best chance for economic growth.
While more than 100 Swedish companies are doing business in Ukraine, bilateral trade — according to Swedish government statistics — is only $415 million. It’s a lopsided relationship, with $340 million in Swedish exports to Ukraine and $75 million in Ukrainian exports to Sweden. Ukrainian statistics put the figure higher, but still well under $1 billion.
Considering the daily non-stop flights of only two hours between Kyiv and Stockholm, and the 10-million-person Swedish nation’s enormous purchasing power — approaching $50,000 per person, at least six times higher than Ukraine’s income — the economic ties are disappointing.
Nonetheless, trade is registering “positive dynamics,” and includes the recent entries of such iconic Swedish brands as H&M clothing and Ikea furniture.
“The overall level of trade is so small,” he said. “That means that one single contract for Ericsson (Swedish telecommunications firm) will change the picture. Ukraine will be rolling out 4G and 5G (telephone services), so there could be an immediate impact on trade if Ericsson wins a bid.”
The single largest exporter is the Swedish subsidiary of U.S.-based Westinghouse, which supplies fuel to several of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants.
The Swedish Lund Male Voice Choir will be coming to Ukraine to perform in Lviv on May 18-19 and Kyiv on May 21-22. The choir, founded in 1831, performs traditional Swedish and Nordic songs mixed with international contemporary male choir songs. (Courtesy of Embassy of Sweden to Ukraine)
Big donor
But Sweden is most known, perhaps, for its generous commitment to assisting Ukraine’s democratic development.
The reasoning is simple, Hagstrom said: “A stronger, more prosperous, democratic Ukraine is good for Sweden in many ways.”
Sweden is one of the biggest donors in the world, on a per-capita basis, and takes a long-range view. It approved, for instance, a seven-year assistance program for Ukraine that runs through 2020 with average yearly bilateral assistance of more than 30 million euros. The assistance arm of the government is the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, known as SIDA.
Moreover, Sweden, as a European Union member, manages some EU assistance programs in Ukraine.
Sweden’s priorities for helping Ukraine are clear: independent media, environmental protection, energy efficiency, market development to take full advantage of Ukraine’s free-trade agreement with the EU, civil society, decentralization of government, gender equality.
Donors & owners
Ukraine’s news media are dependent financially on their owners or donors. It’s not a good or sustainable model. The largest media organizations are owned by billionaire oligarchs who wield their outlets as political clubs, often not respecting editorial independence or journalistic ethics.
Donor-dependent media outlets live only as long as the grants last.
Sweden for the last two years has been trying to support a strong public service broadcaster in Ukraine, particularly in the regions, akin to the dominant Swedish public broadcaster which has large reach and large trust among viewers. Besides a healthier advertising climate, the Swedish government invests heavily in supporting news media.
Ukraine has neither a healthy advertising market nor a rich government.
As a former journalist, Hagstrom is keenly interested in media development. He calls it a strategic priority for Ukraine.
“There are many challenges for media in Ukraine. The market is currently not strong enough to fully sustain commercially viable media. Many media are very dependent on their owners. This contributes to lower trust,” he said. “At a time when you have all the challenges with willful disinformation and hybrid use of all the information, to have the very professional and highly trusted non-partisan media that people can turn to in the time of crisis, we see this as a very strategic project in strengthening Ukraine’s resilience.”
But Hagstrom concedes that “we are early in the journey” of transforming Ukraine’s news media industry into trusted and financially sustainable outlets.
“Ukraine is heavily affected by the breakdown of business models worldwide. Currently, search engines and social media are taking more and more of the advertisement money. If you make a quick move away from print to internet, the problem is that you compete with search engines and social media for revenue.”
Compounding the problems is the unwillingness of Ukraine’s parliament to adequately fund a strong public broadcaster, leaving oligarch-owned TV channels to dominate the airwaves where most Ukrainians get their information.
The international donors, despite multimillion-dollar contributions, have not put up enough money to alter the competitive landscape either. “Such things are not going to happen overnight. It’s a four-year program and we are not alone,” he said. But he said that unless the Ukrainian parliament considers public TV as a strategic investment, “it will not be possible to create” a strong public broadcaster. “The will to do it will have to come from the inside.”
Besides supporting a strong state public broadcaster, Sweden also backs Hromadske TV and says the internet news source feeds quality content to the state broadcaster. “They certainly have a role to play,” he said.
Sweden also supports the online media watchdog, Detector Media, which he says is “doing a good job.”
Sweden also assists such civil society and reform-oriented organizations as the Center for Democracy and Rule of Law, which works on media-support legislation among numerous other projects, and the Reanimation Package of Reforms, which routinely assists journalists with timely information about the state of democratic reforms in Ukraine.
Additionally, the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, Latvia, conducts various training programs for journalists.
Decentralization
Hagstrom sees a “silent revolution happening where more and more powers are moved to municipalities, more and more resources and decisions are taken locally. This is very much what we believe in — very strong municipalities. We have very strong municipalities. Our experience is that this really helps development. It’s instrumental for the innovation climate and the investment climate that municipalities have their own tax base and are trying to develop businesses in competition with each other.”
With the EU, the aim in Ukraine is to open hundreds of administrative service centers in regions. He believes that decentralization done correctly will not only stimulate local economies, but lead to improvements in roads and education. Sweden, as an early adopter of new technologies, is also supporting e-governance not only for efficiency, but also to reduce the power of corrupt local officials seeking bribes.
Sometimes, Sweden can combine multiple goals with the decentralization drive — such as improving district heating efficiency through new boilers, as well as local environmental protection initiatives.
Gender equality
In this area, Hagstrom sees “clear progress” but notes there is “a lot still to do.” Women remain underrepresented in Ukrainian political and business life, are victimized by unpunished violence against them and have trouble in divorces with securing child support and alimony payments.
Sweden is also working with the Ministry of Finance to make sure that women are not excluded from budgets. They’ve already had progress. When analyzing the budget of the Ministry of Youth and Sports, they found that most of the money went to male sports programs.
Furthermore, Sweden is involved for the second year in what it calls the #WikiGap program. To make Wikipedia more diverse, the program encourages writers to increase the number of biographical articles about women. The program involves Swedish embassies all over the world, Hagstrom said, and came into being after it was discovered that there are four times as many articles about men on Wikipedia.
This year’s WikiGap Global Challenge Winner is Ukrainian Andriy Grytsenko, who wrote 360 articles out of more than 1,440 articles contributed globally, including 800 by Ukrainians.
Also, in the name of gender equity, Sweden will show a photo exhibition of fathers and sons to encourage active fatherhood on June 16, the third Sunday in June, which is when the Father’s Day’s holiday is celebrated in America and parts of Europe, and now in Ukraine.
“Sweden is the first country in the world to pursue a feminist foreign policy,” the government says. “Sweden’s feminist foreign policy is about women’s rights, representation and resources.”
Coming events
Some 40 members of the Lund University Male Choir, founded in 1831, will perform concerts in Lviv on May 18–19 and Kyiv on May 21–22, including a cappella concert in the National House of Organ and Chamber Music on 77 Velyka Vasylkivska St.
And for the Day of Europe celebrations on Kyiv’s Shevchenko Park on May 18, Swedish floorball will be played. It is akin to hockey, only minus the skates, ice, puck and stick. It’s played with a plastic ball and sticks, with minimal physical contact among the competing teams, unlike in hockey.
“It’s a very cheap sport,” said Hagstrom, who will be playing on May 18. “All you need is a stick and a ball.”
Scholarships
And finally, the Swedish Institute, a government agency to promote the nation, will grant 24 scholarships this year to Ukrainians to study for master’s degrees at universities in Sweden. There are about 800 alumni of the “very competitive” program, Hagstrom said.
