President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, President of the Republic of Estonia Toomas Hendrik Ilves and President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz to Open YES Annual Meeting September 12 in Kyiv, Ukraine

The 11^th Yalta European Strategy (YES) Annual Meeting entitled “New Ukraine, New Europe, New World: Building and Defending,” will take place in Kyiv, Ukraine from September 11-13, 2014. The annual meeting is organized by YES in partnership with the Victor Pinchuk Foundation. Over 350 global leaders in politics, business, society and media from more than 20 countries will discuss the impact of the historical events in Ukraine since last November on the region and wider Europe and the world. The diverse range of speakers and panelists will speak to crucial questions such as: How can Ukraine address its internal and external challenges and the risks that emanate from them for Europe and beyond? And, how can Ukraine’s international partners effectively support the country’s further development?

For the first time since 2004, the YES Annual Meeting will take place in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. In past years, the forum was held at its traditional venue, the Livadia Palace in Yalta, Crimea, which was annexed by Russia from Ukraine last March.

Aleksander Kwasniewski, Chairman of the Board of Yalta European Strategy: “For more than a decade, the YES Forum has been the leading platform in Eastern Europe to discuss global challenges, shape strategies, and promote Ukraine’s European integration. In this crucial year, we continue gathering Ukraine’s friends from all over the world, giving all sides a voice. Our goal is for the YES Annual Meeting to be a strong impetus for building and defending the new country.”

President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, President of the Republic of Estonia Toomas Hendrik Ilves and President of European Parliament Martin Schulz will officially open the 11th YES Annual Meeting on September 12^th. They will present their visions for Ukraine and its positions in Europe and the world.

Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk will open the second official day of the YES Annual Meeting on September 13^th.

Among the speakers attending this year include: General Wesley K. Clark (ret.), NATO Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe Commander (1997-2000); Mustafa Dzhemilev, Member of Parliament of Ukraine and Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People (1991-2013); Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General, International Atomic Energy Agency (1997-2009); Acting Vice President of Egypt (2013); Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (2005); Valdis Dombrovskis, Member of the European Parliament, Group of the European People's Party; Prime Minister of Latvia (2009-2014); Joschka Fischer, Vice Chancellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany (1998 – 2005); Stefan Füle, EU Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighborhood Policy; Leonid Kuchma, President of Ukraine (1994 – 2005); Aleksander Kwasniewski, President of Poland (1995-2005) and Chairman of the Board of YES; Miroslav Lajčák, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic; Yves Leterme, Secretary General, International IDEA; 48^th Prime Minister of Belgium (2009–2011); Tomas O. Melia, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor; Carlos Pascual, Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs, U.S. Department of State (2011-2014);  Javier Solana, EU High Representative for CFSR (1999-2009), member of the Board of YES; among many others.

Ukraine will be represented by Volodymyr Groisman, Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, Minister of Regional Development, Building and Housing and Communal Services of Ukraine; Pavlo Klimkin, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Yuriy Prodan, Minister of Energy and Coal Industry of Ukraine; Vitaliy Klitschko, Mayor of Kyiv; Serhiy Taruta, Head, Donetsk Regional State Administration; Valeria Hontareva, Head, National Bank of Ukraine; and others.

Speakers also include corporate leaders, economists and experts, including: Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History, Harvard University; Roger Myerson, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago, Nobel Memorial Prize Laureate in Economic Sciences (2007); Timothy Snyder, Professor, Yale University; Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (2007-2011); Lawrence H. Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor, Harvard University Kennedy School of Government; Pavlo Sheremeta, former Minister for Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine (2014); Maxim Timchenko, Chief Executive Officer, Chairman of the Management Board, DTEK; Sviatoslav Vakarchuk, Founder, Foundation "People of the Future"; Civic Leader; Igor Yurgens, Chairman of the Management Board, Institute for Contemporary Development; Ruslan Grinberg, Director, Institute of Economics, Russian Academy of Sciences, and others.

Chrystia Freeland, Member of the Parliament of Canada, and Stephen Sackur, Presenter, HARDtalk, BBC will moderate the YES Annual Meeting. Participants will arrive in Kyiv on September 11^th to start first discussion at the Opening Reception. The official venue of the meetings is the National Cultural-Art and Museum Complex «Mystetskyi Arsenal».

The 11th Yalta European Strategy Annual Meeting will be streamed live at yes-ukraine.org in English and Ukrainian.

The official Twitter of the 11^th YES Annual Meeting is @yes_ukraine, and participants and followers can include the hashtag: #YESUkraine2014

Special Partners of the 11^th Yalta European Strategy Annual Meeting include:
DTEK
ALFA-BANK (UKRAINE)
BURISMA HOLDINGS

Partners of the 11^th Yalta European Strategy Annual Meeting are:
SHELL
CONCORDE CAPITAL
INTERNATIONAL RENAISSANCE FOUNDATION

Media Partners of the 11^th Yalta European Strategy Annual Meeting are:
ICTV
UKRAYINSKA PRAVDA
NOVOYE VREMYA STRANY (NV)
ERA FM

Contact Information for Media Enquiries:

[email protected]

Tel.: +380 44 494 11 48

Yalta European Strategy (YES) is the leading public diplomacy platform in Eastern Europe to develop strategies for Ukraine and Wider Europe and promote Ukraine’s European integration.

YES was established in 2004 by Ukrainian businessman and public figure Victor Pinchuk and is led by a distinguished board including President of Poland (1995-2005) Aleksander Kwasniewski, former Secretary General of NATO (1995-1999) and EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy (1999-2009) Javier Solana, and others.

The YES Annual Meetings held in Yalta’s Livadia Palace since 2004 have brought together world leaders in Ukraine to discuss strategies for Ukraine and Wider Europe on a global level, bring global thinking to Ukraine, and put Ukraine on the international agenda. The Annual Meetings have provided a platform for an open dialog between representatives of Ukraine, the Russian Federation, the EU, the US and beyond, as well as for the Ukrainian government and opposition.

The YES Annual Meetings have brought together heads of state and government including Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Dalia Grybauskaitė, Bronisław Komorowski, Leonid Kuchma, Mario Monti, Shimon Peres, Yulia Tymoshenko, Gerhard Schröder, Viktor Yanukovych and Viktor Yushchenko. Since 2004 among the speakers have been also senior ministers, politicians, and heads of international organizations like Kofi Annan, Eğemen Bağış, Carl Bildt, Hillary Clinton, Arkadiy Dvorkovich, Joschka Fischer, Štefan Füle, Herman Gref, Vitaliy Klitschko, Alexei Kudrin, Pascal Lamy, Ronald Noble, David Petraeus, Petro Poroshenko, Condoleezza Rice, Bill Richardson, Radosław Sikorski, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Lawrence H. Summers, Shashi Tharoor, James Wolfensohn, Lamberto Zannier, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and Robert Zoellick. Politicians, businessmen and thinkers, including Newt Gingrich, Richard Branson, Niall Ferguson, Jin Liqun, Michio Kaku, Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubini, and Muhammad Yunus have also spoken at YES Meetings.

For the first time in the 11-year history of the YES Annual Meeting, the forum will be held in the capital of Ukraine Kyiv.

Official website: yes-ukraine.org

Victor Pinchuk Foundation

The Victor Pinchuk Foundation is an international, private and non-partisan philanthropic foundation based in Ukraine. It was established in 2006 by businessman and public figure Victor Pinchuk.

Its goal is to empower the young generation to change their country and the world. To achieve this, projects have been developed and partnerships have been built in Ukraine and worldwide for a decade.

We invest

· In people, to boost human capital;

· In society, to promote social responsibility;

· In the world, to foster a more integrated world.

The projects of the Victor Pinchuk Foundation include, among others: the network of neonatal Centers Cradles of Hope, the largest private scholarship programme in Ukraine, Zavtra.Ua, the WorldWideStudies scholarship programme for Ukrainian students studying abroad, and the centre for contemporary art PinchukArtCentre. The foundation also hosts the Davos Philanthropic Roundtable and Davos Ukrainian Lunch, organized each year at the occasion of the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum.

The foundation supports the international network YES (Yalta European Strategy) to foster Ukraine’s European and global integration, and a crowdfunding platform to foster giving in Ukrainian society, the Philanthropic Marketplace. The Foundation is a member of the European Foundation centre and the Ukrainian Grantmakers Forum. It cooperates with the Clinton Global Initiative, the Brookings Institution, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Peres Center for Peace, the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, and other nongovernmental organizations.

Official website: pinchukfund.org

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