As the war continues to escalate in Ukraine, the Western powers are deploying a series of measures in their attempt to resist Putin and end the war. The West’s main tool are economic sanctions which aim to cut the Russian economy off from the rest of the world. Are these measures enough or can and should the West do more? How likely is it that Russia will successfully occupy large parts of the country? And if there is a workable ceasefire, what can we expect Ukraine to look like once that deal is signed? Finally, what might Putin do next and is there any tangible threat to his regime at the moment?

The Henry Jackson Society is pleased to gather a panel of world experts on the topic to discuss these pressing issues.

Kira Rudik is a Ukrainian politician, member of Ukrainian parliament, the head of “Golos” party. She is a former CEO of IT company Ring Ukraine. Rudik obtained her master’s degree in computer science at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, a top academic university in Ukraine. She also attended the Executive Program for Women Leaders at Stanford Business School in 2018.

Tim Judah is a journalist and author and covers the Balkans and other regions as a correspondent for The Economist.

He has worked for many major publications and broadcasters, notably writing wartime reportage from Afghanistan to Ukraine for the New York Review of Books.

He is the author of three books on the Balkans—The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, Kosovo: War & Revenge and Kosovo: What Everyone Needs to Know—and published a book on the conflict in Ukraine – In Wartime: Stories from Ukraine in 2016.

From 1990 to 1991, Judah lived in Bucharest and covered the aftermath of communism in Romania and Bulgaria for The Times and The Economist. After that, he moved to Belgrade for both publications in order to cover the war in Yugoslavia. He moved back to London in 1995 but continues to travel to the region frequently.

In 2009 he was a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at LSEE, the south-east Europe research unit of the European Institute at the London School of Economics, where he developed the concept of the ‘Yugosphere’.

In 2018-19 he was a fellow of the Europe’s Futures project of the Institute for Human Sciences / IWM in Vienna and began researching demography and depopulation in central and eastern Europe and the Balkans. A series of articles is being published as a result on Balkan Insight / Reporting Democracy and the Erste Stiftung website, as well as articles in The Economist and elsewhere.

He is the president of the boards of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and the Kosovar Stability Initiative (IKS).

Over the past two decades, Judah has worked around the world for The Economist, the New York Review of Books and others. He has notably reported from countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Madagascar, Niger, Senegal, Sudan, North Korea, Darfur, Haiti, France and Armenia.

In 2008 he published Bikila: Ethiopia’s Barefoot Olympian for Reportage Press about the life and times of the first black African to win a gold medal at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, which led him to be shortlisted in the ‘best new sportswriter’ category of the 2009 British Sports Book Awards.

Taras Kuzio is a Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society and Professor in the Department of Political Science, National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy. His previous positions were at the University of Alberta, George Washington University, and University of Toronto, International Institute of Strategic Studies, and School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. Taras Kuzio holds a PhD in political science from the University of Birmingham, England, an MA in Area Studies (USSR, Eastern Europe) from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, and a BA in Economics from the School of European Studies, University of Sussex. He held a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Yale University. Taras Kuzio is the author and editor of 22 books, 38 book chapters and over 130 scholarly articles on Soviet, Eurasian, Russian, and Ukrainian politics, colour revolutions, nationalism, geopolitics, and international relations.

Peter Pomerantsev is a Senior Fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University where he co-directs the Arena Initiative.

Between 2017-  2020, he was a Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science where he was the director of the Arena Initiative, a research project dedicated to overcoming the challenges of digital era disinformation and polarisation. His book on Russian propaganda, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, won the 2016 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and was nominated for the Samuel Johnson, Guardian First Book, Pushkin House and Gordon Burns Prizes. It is translated into over a dozen languages and was dramatized on BBC Radio 4. His new book, This is Not Propaganda, was released in August 2019 and has been shortlisted for the Gordon Burns Prize and was a Times Book of the Year.

Peter has testified on the challenges of information war and media development to the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the UK Parliament Defense Select Committee. He was a specialist advisor on the ‘UK Parliamentary Committee on Fake News’, and was a member of USC Annenberg’s ‘Transatlantic Working Group on Internet Content Moderation and Freedom of Expression. He is a columnist at the American Interest, and writes for publications including the NY Times, Granta and The Atlantic. Between 2002 and 2014 he was a television producer on documentaries and factual entertainment programs for major networks including the Discovery Channel and the BBC. He continues to present and write radio documentaries for the BBC Radio 4, most recently on disinformation about climate change.

Peter is frequently asked to host policy seminars at NATO, the EU, the UK FCO, German Foreign Office, U.S. State Department, as well as numerous public events. He has helped write in-depth policy recommendations on counter-propaganda and media diversity for both national governments and NGOs, including the UK Foreign Office’s Strategic Communication policies for Russia and the Western Balkans.’ He has given seminars and talks on the subject of propaganda and media at universities including Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Columbia and Princeton. He has been a fellow of the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna.

Bob Seely is the Member of Parliament for the Isle of Wight. He sits on the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee. Mr Seely writes academically and journalistically on foreign affairs as well as more generally on non-conventional and new forms of conflict. Prior to his election in June 2017, Mr Seely served on the Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and ISIS campaigns as a member of the Armed Forces. From 1990 to 1994, Mr Seely lived in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet states. His academic and foreign affairs writing is available online at: https://kcl.academia.edu/RobertSeely. Mr Seely has written one of the few peer-reviewed definitions of Contemporary Russian Conflict Strategy available in the West.

***

EVENT SUMMARY

On the 1^st of February Dr Taras Kuzio, Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, Peter Pomerantsev, Senior Fellow at the SNF Agora Institute, Kira Rudik, head of the Golos Party, Bob Seely, MP for the Isle of Wight, Tim Judah, Balkan correspondent for The Economist, and Iuliia Osmolovska, Founder of Art of Business and Diplomacy Group, discussed the Russian invasion of Ukraine and what Western powers can do to bring the conflict to a rapid conclusion.

Dr Kuzio began the talk by introducing the topic and speakers. Kira Rudik spoke about her life in Kyiv during the ongoing Russian attack and recent legislation passed in the Ukrainian parliament to prepare the country for resistance. She made an impassioned plea for NATO to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine. Tim Judah then spoke about the mass disruption to civilian life and the shortages of goods. He spoke of how Ukraine has been transformed since the war started 8 years ago as all elements of the state were prepared from the military to health service. He argued the Russians vastly underestimated Ukrainian patriotism. Bob Seely discussed his warnings of how Putin would use the creation of Kosovo to justify wars of aggression against Georgia and Ukraine and that Putin sees a strong democratic Ukraine as a threat to Russia’s stability. Mr Seely made clear that Russians elite have a deep fear of the West. Peter Pomerantsev was buoyed by the support Ukraine has received from Washington and argued that Putin sees himself at war with West and that Putin will push into Europe until he restores his nebulous idea of “Russia”. Iuliia Osmolovska spoke about low public and military morale in Russia compounded by poor logistics and how the Russians are subverting the Ukrainian war effort.

Dr Kuzio then summarised the audience questions into four broad points which were on the feasibility of a No-Fly zone, how the war will impact Putin domestically, whether the Russians will employee more aggressive tactics and the consequences of an occupation of Ukraine.

#HJSEvents