Ukrainian MP speaking at EC for Kosovo today is in Pristina

He made a big fuss with his speech to the Council of Europe, where he called for recognition of Kosovo.

Goncharenko also has indicated he plans to have a meeting with President Vjosa Osmani and Prime Minister Albin Kurti.

Saranda Bogujevci was the first Kosovo to speak this Tuesday at the Council of Europe General Assembly, after the delegation was also allowed the right to speak this time, besides participating, but it was not the only one who spoke for Kosovo.

Olexey Goncharenko, a member of Ukraine's delegation to the Council of Europe General Assembly, with a passionate speech, called on 12 KiE members who have not yet recognised Kosovo “immediately make”.

Please recognize this country as an independent state. They fought for their future, for their independence they must sit here with us. They must be part of the Council of Europe”, Goncharenko said.

Finally, in Albanian, Kosovo declared that “is Europe”.

This is not the first time or the last time Ukrainian politician will talk about Kosovo, because as he says, “knows history and I know how difficult Kosovo's path to independence” was.

Speaking to the AP, Goncharenko said he finds many similarities between what is currently happening in Ukraine and the recent war in Kosovo.

The genocide that happened there, the terrible events and especially now what we're going through, I believe these two events have a lot in common, and that's why I feel I have to support Kosovo and I'm going to do it in the future”.

Kosovo is Europe” in Albanian has learned to say when visiting Kosovo in 2008, when independence was declared.

I was lucky to have visited Kosovo in 2008. I have loved Kosovo, people and Prizren, especially which I consider to be one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen”.

But, the trip to Kosovo will soon not only be a beautiful memory of 2008, because at KiE Goncharenko he also met with the Kosovo delegation and they have invited him to visit again.

I have met with the Kosovo delegation to the Council of Europe and was invited to visit Kosovo. The visit will probably take place in late October”, told the AP.

In addition to calls at the KiE General Assembly, Goncharenko is also calling for recognition of Kosovo in his country in Ukraine.

Ukraine still recognised Kosovo, and the politician from Odessa has taken an initiative to change this state of non-recognition.

On August 5th, through his Twitter account, he had announced that he delivered draft resolutions to Verkhovna Rada (The Ukraine Parliament) for recognising Kosovo's independence.

Goncharenko is an independent MP and is an opposition. He does not have his own parliamentary group to put off the case, but there is hope.

The cause is right, and his skills in articulating him are small.

At the moment my draft resolution on Kosovo's independence is on the Parliamentary Commission for Foreign Policy, the ruling still on it”, Goncharenko shows.

Why has his proposal stalled more than with his own stance on Kosovo, it has to do with the delicate and more cautious movements Ukraine has at this time made in foreign policy.

The foreign affairs ministry's “position is not to rush over by stride”, he says, “but I will continue to inform Ukrainians of all the support we are receiving from Kosovo and the people of Kosovo”.

Olexey Goncharenko Political Road
He is Ukrainian from the town of Odessa, the Ukrainian MP and a member of the Ukrainian delegation to the General Assembly at the Council of Europe.

He is also vice-president of the Commission for Migration, Refugees and the Homecoming of Persons.

Goncharenko is also the founder of the Ukrainian network for education and culture.

In 2014 he was elected as MP in parliament, or as he is known in Ukraine, in Verkhovna Rada, on the list of the party of Petro Porosenko bloc.

In the 2019 parliamentary elections, Goncharenko competed and was elected as an independent MP, winning a seat from the town of Podilsk, the area of Odessa.

Goncharenko is the son of the former president of Odessa, Olexiy Costusyev.

From 1999 to 2001, he had worked at the Odesa emergency medical station, and in 2002, he graduated with honor at the University of Medicine but decided not to pursue a career within the profession but to pursue politics.

He was only 21 years old, when he competed, but without success, for the Council of District in Odessa from the Tairove village area of the Ukrainian Green Party.

After that, he once worked as an assistant on this Council.

Then he enrolled studies at Moscow University, directed by Financa, where he graduated in 2005 with a degree in economics.

Still, it would turn the policy to win local elections in several positions until 2012 it competes for the first time in Ukraine's parliamentary elections, but lost to counterCandidate Ihor Markov.

Before Euromaidan, who happened in Ukraine, Goncharenko was a member of the Region Party. But in 2014, on February 19th, after only a few victims were left in EuroMaidan during the protests, Goncharenko resigned from the party.

In 2015 he was arrested by Russian forces after taking part in the march in memory of Nemtsov, the Russian opposition.

According to him, when he was arrested he was brutally beaten by Russian police forces and had vowed to sue Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs.

By 2015, Goncharenko has been a member of the Ukrainian parliamentary delegation to the Council of Europe. Since then, he has been a major critic of the regime in Russia and has spoken out of violation of human rights there.

In his speeches to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, he criticised Moscow for violating human rights and for occupying Crime and pieces of Donetsk and Luhansk.

He has also long fought Russian propaganda and Kremlin Narratives.

Since the war in Ukraine has begun, he actively lobbies for the creation of an international tribunal that would investigate Russia's crimes in Ukraine.

He has continued to fight Russian propaganda until actively providing interviews for international media.