The Kyiv Post awarded its annual Top 30 Under 30 prizes for the fourth time at the Unit City Innovation Park in Kyiv on Dec. 10.
Every year since 2016, during its annual Tiger Conference, the Kyiv Post gives the award to 30 young Ukrainians who have achieved outstanding results in their chosen fields.
Check the full list of the 2019 Top 30 Under 30 winners here.
The 2019 winners include artists, athletes, entrepreneurs, journalists, teachers, two government ministers and one military officer. All of them are between 18 and 29 years old.
The winners this year were selected by a mixed jury of their predecessors and the Kyiv Post’s editorial team. The nominees were proposed by the public in an open call.
The sponsor of the award this year is Winner Group Ukraine, the official importer of Ford, Volvo, Jaguar, Land Rover, Porsche and Bentley to Ukraine.
The acting ministers who received the awards are Mykhailo Fedorov, minister of digital transformation, and Anna Novosad, minister of education and science. Both said they feel the prize is given to them as an advance for the goals they plan to achieve at their jobs. Fedorov and Novosad started leading their ministries after the youngest government in Ukrainian history was voted in on Aug. 29.
“These 100 days that we spent in our new roles are just the beginning,” Novosad said during her acceptance speech. “You will be able to calculate (our achievements) later on.”
Novosad, 29, and Fedorov, 28, are some of the youngest ministers in the Cabinet.
The winner of the prize in 2018, Greco-Roman wrestling champion Zhan Beleniuk, who is now a lawmaker, presented the award to Novosad.
“It’s very pleasant that we have such a young government, energetic people, who, I’m sure, will do everything needed to move our country further,” Beleniuk said.
Novosad, who is in charge of the education system, which includes over 15,000 schools and 300 universities, said that her main goal is to create equal opportunities for every child, regardless of their location or background.
“I want our education system to help all those who need it and create opportunities so that everyone has a chance to be successful and happy,” Novosad said.
Oleksiy Martseniuk, deputy minister of defense, presents the Kyiv Post’s Top 30 Under 30 award to one of the 2019 winners, military officer Roman Bagayev, during the ceremony on Dec. 10, 2019 at Unit City in Kyiv. Bagayev is the two-time top tank ace in Ukraine’s army. (Oleg Petrasiuk)
A winner of Top 30 Under 30 in 2016, Crimean Tatar journalist Sevgil Musayeva presented the prize to the Crimean Tatar filmmaker Nariman Aliyev. His full feature debut, which follows a Crimean Tatar family in modern Ukraine, has received multiple awards since premiering at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
“Unfortunately, Nariman and I are of the third generation of Crimean Tatars who have lost their home. And this movie turned out so profound because it has the pain of three generations of Crimean Tatars,” Musayeva said.
Aliyev says he sends all of his awards to his mother, who lives in Russian-occupied Crimea. She puts them in his room.
“I can’t sleep in my room for now,” Aliyev says. “But I’m sure that, when I come back there, I will still be a little less than thirty.”
Several musicians, including hip hop stars Alyona Alyona and Alina Pash, are also on the winners’ list this year. Pash, who mixes hip hop and Ukrainian folk motifs in her music, received the prize from former investigative journalist and lawmaker Sergii Leshchenko, a Kyiv Post columnist.
As he was presenting the award, Leshchenko emphasized that Pash, 26, had a number of opportunities to move abroad but instead she chose to stay here and, furthermore, promote Ukrainian identity.
Pash said that she is honored to have made it to the Top 30 Under 30 list for doing what she loves the most — creating brave, unconventional music.
“I want to stay in this country because my roots, my language are here,” Pash said. “I can do it in English or in Russian, but the best way I do it is in Ukrainian.”
Iryna Shyba, the 27-year old executive director of a legal think tank DEJURE Foundation, holds up the Kyiv Post’s Top 30 Under 30 award during the ceremony on Dec. 10, 2019, at Unit City in Kyiv. (Kostyantyn Chernichkin)
A very touching moment came during the ceremony when Oleksiy Martsyniuk, the deputy defense minister, presented the award to Ukrainian military officer Roman Bagayev and war veteran Roman Nabozhniak. Both of them defended Ukraine in Russia’s war, which has killed almost 14,000 people since 2014.
Martsyniuk, who has been in the office for nearly two months, said that it would have been impossible to hold events like this ceremony if soldiers like Bagayev and Nabozhniak haven’t defended our country.
“These are our true heroes,” he said through tears.
Bagayev, 29, the two-time top tank ace in Ukraine’s army who proved to be an exceptionally talented commander, said he did not feel comfortable being present at such events.
Bagayev said that as a military officer, he would prefer to be “in a forest, close to a tank where it is much safer.”
“I have not achieved anything, I’m just doing my job,” Bagayev said.
Three journalists from Ukraine’s leading investigative media have received the award this year, too. The Kyiv Post’s chief editor, Brian Bonner, presented the prizes to Valeriya Egoshyna of Schemes, Lesya Ivanova of Bihus.Info and Kateryna Lykhohliad of Slidstvo.Info.
“For me, and, I think, for society, journalists are heroes. And if journalists are heroes, then investigative journalists are superheroes. It’s very difficult, and it can be a very dangerous work,” Bonner said.
Egorshyna and Ivanova both pointed out that their foreign colleagues are often surprised that Ukraine’s leading investigative journalists are so young.
“To do investigative journalism, you have to spend sleepless nights while writing and filming stories. And you have to have strength, inspiration and energy, unfortunately, to withstand the pressure exerted on journalists in Ukraine,” Egorshyna said.
A number of civil society leaders were awarded by the Kyiv Post this time. One of them is 28-year-old communications expert Maria Artemenko, who runs three non-profit charity initiatives on top of her regular job.
In her acceptance speech, Artemenko encouraged everyone to join charitable initiatives and do good deeds.
“Everyone can change the world,” Artemenko said.
