At the invitation of the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, Sergiy Solodkyy, First Deputy Director of the New Europe Center spoke on a public discussion.

3 lessons that Ukraine can learn from the history of the Berlin wall:

• Achieving the goal takes time. It took Germany almost half a century to reunite, but germans did not gave up this idea.
• We should not expect the whole world to support our interests and plans. At the time of German unification, even its allies were not willing to support the idea.
• Excessive enthusiasm and optimism can be harmful. The fall of the Berlin wall was linked with many optimistic expectations. The democratic world was supposed to prevail over authoritarian trends. However, this did not happen. Instead of a single fallen Berlin Wall, we can see many more new walls, sometimes metaphorical, sometimes real.