The Wilson Center and Ratiu Family Foundation Award Mykhailo Amrosiev 2023 Ion Ratiu Democracy Prize and Fellowship

WASHINGTON—The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in cooperation with the Ratiu Family Foundation, is pleased to announce that Mykhailo Amrosiev was awarded the 2023 Ion Ratiu Democracy Prize and Fellowship.

The Wilson Center has partnered with the London-based Ratiu Family Foundation since 2006 to award the Ratiu Democracy Prize and Fellowship. The Ion Ratiu Democracy Award and Fellowship (IRDF) supports individuals around the world who are working on behalf of democracy as activists or intellectuals, whether they are in exile from repressive regimes or operating within emerging democracies. Recipients of the Ion Ratiu Democracy Fellowship will have an opportunity to engage with the Washington policy, media, and scholarly communities but also to find time for reflection and writing on democratic activism, often not possible while focusing on the day-to-day struggles in their home/exile country.

In this sense, the IRDF will seek to replicate the type of life-changing experience that the late Ion Ratiu encountered as a young Romanian democracy activist in Washington in the 1970s and 1980s. Ratiu believed that the West was too taken by Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu’s apparent defiance of Moscow in the 1980s, so he took it upon himself to tour key Western capitals to explain the reality of the country’s human rights abuses and the excesses of its dictatorial regime.

This year’s recipient, Mykhailo Amrosiev, has been working to promote and implement democratic ideals in modern Ukrainian society since he began his studies at Kyiv National Economic University in 2013. He organized the “Ukraine is Europe” student march during Euromaidan in November 2013 and was one of the founders of the council of student organizers taking part in the larger protests in support of democracy. While demonstrating on February 18, 2014, Amrosiev was severely wounded by gunfire.

After recovering, Amrosiev joined a volunteer battalion taking part in combat operations in eastern Ukraine in early 2015, and has received numerous awards for his actions. In 2020, he founded the “Young Veterans” organization with the goal of helping young servicemen such as himself reacclimatize to civilian life. In February 2022, Amrosiev rejoined the volunteer military and is currently serving on the frontlines of the conflict.

Amrosiev joins past awardees which include Roman Protasevich (Belarus), Camelia Bogdan (Romania), Manuel Cuesta Moura (Cuba), Jamil Hasanli (Azerbaijan), Mustafa Nayyem (Ukraine), Angela Kocze (Hungary), Nabeel Rajab (Bahrain), Oleg Kozlovsky (Russia), Adam Michnik (Poland), Eleonora Cercavschi (Moldova), and Anatoli Mikhailov (Belarus), Saad Ibrahim (Egypt), and Sergio Aguayo (Mexico).

For more information, please visit the Ion Ratiu Democracy Prize and Fellowship website: www.wilsoncenter.org/ratiu.