Building Bridges: How young Ukrainians are redefining European connection
Nowadays, bridges between countries are more than just road structures. They often serve as a metaphor for connection, exchange and understanding. And it's precisely these kinds of bridges that Lviv, the European Youth Capital 2025, is actively building today.
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Behind the Youth Capital title stands a team of young people who build bridges through international partnerships and projects, present the Ukrainian experience at forums and conferences across Europe, and reinvent Ukraine both for themselves and for others.
Meet the Youth Capital Ambassadors
Almost 50 young people aged 14 to 35 are ambassadors of the youth capital. Many of them have years of experience working at the intersection of youth policy, cross-sectoral projects, advocacy and cultural diplomacy. They are the face of a new generation of Ukrainian community leaders.
One of them is Viktoriia Kravets, who has been developing the youth movement in Ukraine for over seven years. She actively participates in the organisation of Molodvizh, the country's largest youth event, which gathers over 5,000 participants annually. This event has become a meeting point for discussing community development, mental health, geopolitics, and veteran affairs, and this year it’s part of the European Youth Capital programme. Vika (as the group likes to call her) also helped launch the Lviv Youth Fund, participated in the creation of the city's Youth Strategy and facilitated numerous focus groups. She built her very first “bridge” at the age of 13, when she became a member of the Children's Advisory Council in Lviv and developed projects that improved the lives of her peers and connected local authorities and youth organisations.
Since then, she has also built bridges between Ukraine and the rest of Europe (e.g. through participating at the LevelUp event in Brussels). For Vika, international partnerships are not just about exchanges or experience. They are about assigning new meanings. About the inspiration born from conversations with people from different countries and about the ideas one wants to implement at home. Because in Vika’s eyes true partnership is always about openness to others and the courage to be heard.
"The Youth Capital gave us more than just a platform. It gave us the opportunity to influence. When I talk about Lviv and this title, I always say it's about changing the course. We don't wait for change to come to us. We create it ourselves. And our EU partners see that," shares Vika.
Yurii Lomikovskyi, another Youth Capital Ambassador, became Ukraine's Youth Delegate to the UN in 2024–2025. The bridges he built extend far beyond Ukraine all the way to New York and then back to Europe, at the General Assembly of the European Youth Forum. What’s his main weapon you may ask? Stories. He doesn't just tell general phrases, he rather narrates human experiences. One of these stories travelled with him to the international stage – the story of Yaryna Bazylevych, programme manager of Lviv European Youth Capital 2025. She was the organiser of Molodvizh 2024, but three days before the event she was killed by a Russian missile. Yurii took her badge with him and showed it to the other UN Delegates, as a symbol of all those people in Ukraine have lost.
"It was our way of telling the world: what we say is not theory. It's life. It's pain, but also strength. We go to forums not just as representatives, but as carriers of stories. Because every story is our reality," shares Yurii.
During his trips to New York, Yurii repeatedly addressed the UN audience, defending the interests of Ukrainian youth. Among the most important challenges was speaking about the war in a hall where representatives of so many different countries sat at the same table.
"We spoke not with numbers, but with examples, about students studying in bomb shelters, about friends who became volunteers or went to the front. These aren't stories from the news, this is our life," adds Yurii.
Voices like Vika and Yurii's are proof that Ukrainian young people are themselves agents of international support. After all, international diplomacy today is no longer just a state's affair. It's also the voice of young people who are willing to share their own lived experiences.
Connections are in everything Lviv does
Both Vika and Yurii are convinced, international youth diplomacy is not something distant. It's something that starts with simple things: a trip, a project, participation in a forum, a group of people - such as the Youth Capital Ambassadors.
"We have something to show. We have something to teach. We have friends all over the world. But for these bridges to work, we need to speak. We need to listen. And we need to be ready to take responsibility for change," concludes Vika.
"When I was a child, I saw the graffiti 'Ukraine is Europe.' Now I understand: it's not just a slogan. It's a mission. And each of us is a part of it," adds Yurii.
Being a young Ukrainian today isn't about waiting for the future, it's about creating it here and now. Lviv is about exactly that. It's about people who build bridges, through dialogue, through the courage to be themselves in the darkest times. Because bridges are about people. About those who build. And those who cross.
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