A conversation with Austrian MEP Helmut Brandstätter in Brussels
Earlier this year, MEP Helmut Brandstätter, an Austrian member of the European Parliament, visited a number of cities in Ukraine – Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Uzhgorod, Lviv, Bucha, to name a few – in the framework of a parliamentary friendship group and was deeply moved by what he saw and what he heard. The European Times met him.
After he was back home, he said in a speech at the Austrian Parliament:
“We have experienced what people have told us; they have told us about the war, but also about this incredible will to resist. They have told us that they know that if they do not win this war, they will live in a Putin dictatorship.
We heard about Holodomor, that was 90 years ago. The goal was death by starvation – Holodomor. Today, people in Ukraine speak of Holodomor goal: death by freezing. What dictator Stalin has started, dictator Putin now wants to complete in Ukraine.”
Ukrainian MP Ina Sovsun told him “This must not be repeated, 90 years later.”
MEP Helmut Brandstätter is actively involved in providing assistance to Ukraine.
Humanitarian assistance to Ukraine
Q.: Mr Brandstätter, what is the level and the type of humanitarian assistance that Austria has provided to Ukraine?
First of all, Austria contributes at the level of 2.8% of the EU’s GDP for EU’s assistance to Ukraine. But since Russia’s full-scale war began in February 2022, the Austrian federal government and municipalities have cumulatively committed almost €300 million in bilateral aid to Ukraine, covering both direct humanitarian assistance and in-kind contributions as of early 2025. A few concrete examples.
Via the Red Cross Austria helps with mobile health units, emergency vehicles, that go through small villages with a doctor and a nurse to help isolated elderly people. Those units bring them something to eat, hygiene articles and they check if they need medication and they chat with them because this is also what they need.
Via Caritas, Austria gives help to handicapped people, contributes to a training program of teachers about how to deal with trauma of children.
In many places, social centers are being run by Austrian NGOs which implement programs of international organizations like UNICEF, UNFPA or UNHCR, providing heated meeting places in winter, recreational places for young people, psycho-social support, legal aid,
Then there are generators, emergency vehicles, school buses, minivans, firetrucks that are brought to Ukraine with the help of the State, the regions, communities, the business sector, or private initiatives.
European Times additional info:
This multi-faceted assistance program includes around €117 million in humanitarian aid (relief operations), €8 million in civil protection in-kind aid, and €146–147 million for maintaining basic services and infrastructure, with additional smaller allocations for other areas like anti‑corruption and nuclear safety.
In February 2022: An additional €15 million from Austria’s Foreign Disaster Fund (AKF) for Ukrainian needs.
In June 2024: €10 million to NGOs active in Ukraine and Moldova: around €6 million to “Neighbors in Need”, and the remainder distributed between ICRC and UNHCR.
In November 2024: A further €8 million, of which €5 million supported humanitarian demining via WFP, and €3 million went to entities like ICRC, UNICEF, and UNFPA.
Twin your city with a Ukrainian city for direct, speedy and corruption-free assistance
Q.: The Austrian population must feel far away from those big international humanitarian organizations. How to make them aware in their daily lives that every day on their doorstep dozens of millions of Ukrainians, old and young, need help to survive Russia’s aggression war on Ukraine which has been raging for three years and a half now and they cannot see the end of it.
The best way to mobilize them is put to them personally in contact with the people needing help: building on existing twinnings between EU and Ukrainian cities, and creating new twinnings. That is what we have done and are doing in my city, Vienna, which through its Municipal Department 27 and the Vienna Health Association, has sent dozens of truck convoys to Ukraine:
In October 2024, the 70th truck with relief supplies from the City of Vienna for Ukraine was loaded at the Favoriten Hospital. The truck brought 40 hospital beds and 71 mattresses to the hospital in Podilsk in the Odessa region after a few months earlier medical equipment, surgical instruments, and linen with a total weight of 5.2 tons had been delivered from Vienna. In 2024 alone, 722 hospital beds were donated. Since the start of the war, Vienna has delivered over 425 tons of relief supplies, plus 50,000 € in financial aid via SECI wien.gv.at.
But other Austrian cities are twinned with Ukrainian cities and help them in various ways : Graz and Lviv, Linz and Dnipro, Salzburg and Kharkiv, Innsbruck and Ivano-Frankivsk.
It is important for our citizens in Austria to keep in mind that there is a war on our continent, a few hundred kilometers from home, that in Ukraine people fight an existential defence and that they are also our shield. We all need to help them.
Our populations in our EU democracies need to be fully aware of the danger represented by Russia for their own future and the future of their children. To be directly involved right now in solidarity projects allows them to touch the reality with their fingers and with their hearts, but also to understand difficult political decisions meant to keep away the threat of a possible new totalitarian neighbour.
Austria and Ukraine have various sister city partnerships, fostering cultural exchange, trade, and mutual support and have built up on these pre-war initiatives to provide life-saving assistance: Vienna-Kyiv, Graz-Lviv, Linz-Dnipro, Salzburg-Kharkiv, Innsbruck and Ivano-Frankivsk. When Ceaucescu was in power in Romania in the 1980s and was destroying villages to concentrate the rural populations in cities against their will, European countries launched a huge solidarity operation called “Save Romanian villages.” On its way to EU membership, Ukraine deserves to benefit from a similar project “Twin your city with a Ukrainian city.”
