On February 17, 2018, Victor Pinchuk Foundation and Yalta European Strategy (YES) will host the 2^nd Munich Ukrainian Lunch, titled “Ukraine on the Frontlines of a New Kind of Warfare: Lessons for the West, and Prospects for Peace” and organized at the occasion of the Munich Security Conference. The event will bring together international decision makers and opinion leaders from the security sphere to discuss the ways to peace in Ukraine and the lessons that Ukraine’s experience can teach its international partners.

The Munich Ukrainian Lunch will feature opening remarks by Chrystia Freeland, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada, and a panel discussion with Dr. Robert Gates, 22nd U.S. Secretary of Defense (2006-2011), Pavlo Klimkin, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Kurt Volker, United States Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, and others. Comments by John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (2005-2006), Micael Bydén, Swedish Supreme Commander General, Frederick Hodges, Pershing Chair in Strategic Studies at the Center for European Policy Analysis and Commander of the U.S. Army in Europe (2014-2017), Peter Hultqvist, Minister for Defense of Sweden, Michael McFaul, Director and Senior Fellow at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, and Anders Samuelsen, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Denmark. Stephen Sackur, Presenter, HARDtalk, BBC World News, will moderate the discussion.

Selected leaders from politics, business, experts and media from Ukraine and the world will attend the event.

The Munich Ukrainian Lunch was established in 2017 at the occasion of the Munich Security Conference to promote Ukraine on the global security agenda and underline Ukraine’s importance for Europe’s security and the international order. Annually the Munich Ukrainian Lunch engages in dialogue the world decision makers and thought leaders from the security sphere to discuss Ukraine’s role and its prospects in global security structures, as well as the greatest challenges it faces today.

Over the past five decades, the Munich Security Conference (MSC) has become the major global forum for the discussion of security policy. Each February, it brings together more than 500 senior decision-makers from around the world, including heads-of-state, ministers, leading personalities of international and non-governmental organizations, as well as high ranking representatives of industry, media, academia, and civil society, to engage in an intensive debate on current and future security challenges.