On March 20 the International and Security Affairs Centre and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation organized in Belgrade the international conference “Ukrainian Crisis – Views from Ukraine, Germany and Serbia”.
The participants had the pleasure to hear from the following panalists:
- Dr. Borys Bazylevskyi, former ambassador of Ukraine in Ireland and the leading expert, Russia Study Center;
- Mr. Knut Fleckenstein, Member of the European Parliament, Social-democratic Party of Germany;
- Mr. Pavlo Sheremeta, former Minister of Economical Development and Trade of Ukraine (2014) and former president of EERC/Kyiv School of Economics (KSE);
- Mr. Viktor Zamiatin, Leading Expert, Political and Legal Programmes, Razumkov Centre, Kiev;
- Dr. Ivan Vujačić, former ambassador of Serbia to the USA and professor at the Faculty of Economics;
As well as the following discusants:
- Mr. Borko Stefanović, Chair of the Democratic Party Parliamentary Group and former Political Director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Serbia;
- Ms. Aleksandra Joksimović, President of the Center for Foreign Policy and former Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs of FR Yugoslavia;
- Mr. Mijat Lakićević, Deputy Editor in Chief of “Novi Magazin”.
The Ukraine crisis is one of the major challenges for the EU today. It is not just affecting the international relations and the stability of one of the EU partner countries from Eastern Europe, but also the stability of the EU as a whole. For the internal debate about the foreign policy orientation of Serbia and the progressive alignment with the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Serbia needs unbiased information from all sides.
Hence, this conference tackled the main issues related to the Ukraine crisis from the perspectives of Ukraine, EU and Serbia: beginning of the crisis in Ukraine – reasons, challenges and the course of the deepening of the crisis; Ukraine crisis and the position of the EU; Ukrainian political scene and the crisis in the East; and finally Serbia’s stance towards the Ukraine crisis.
ISAC will soon publish the conference report which will be also available on ISAC’s website.
