Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman’s speech will open the second plenary day of the 14th Yalta European Strategy (YES) Annual Meeting

On the morning of September 16^th, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman will open the second plenary day of the 14^th Yalta European Strategy (YES) Annual Meeting with a speech on reform in Ukraine and the role of the European Union in this process. Stephen Sackur, host of HARDTalk on ВВС News, will moderate the discussion with forum participants.

The day’s events will continue the conference theme “Is This a New World? And What Does It Mean for Ukraine?” and highlight issues of particular relevance to Ukrainians. The panels will focus on European attitudes towards Ukraine; relations between Russia and the world; the question of which realistic options exist to provide security for Ukraine; and strategies for returning Donbas and Crimea to Ukrainian control. In addition, one session will focus on the rule of law and feature Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko.

Former Prime Minister of Great Britain Tony Blair will deliver the Shimon Peres Peace Lecture, in memory of President of the State of Israel Shimon Peres who spoke at the YES Annual Meeting three times, and who died on September 28, 2016.

Stephen Sackur, Fareed Zakaria and Richard Haass will serve as the moderators for the panels on September 16^th.

Panelists will include former U.S. Ambassador to Russia and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University Michael McFaul; U.S. Secretary of Defense (2006-2011) Robert Gates; Minister of State for Europe and Americas, Foreign and Commonwealth Office Alan Duncan; Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin; Member of the U.S. House of Representatives Will Hurd; former Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatseniuk; Chairman of the Munich Security Conference and Germany’s former Ambassador to the U.S. Wolfgang Ischinger; Secretary General of NATO (2009- 2014) and member of the YES Board Anders Fogh Rasmussen; Chairman of Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People Refat Chubarov; Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations at the U.S. Department of State Kurt Volker; and former President of Ukraine (1994-2005) Leonid Kuchma.

The online stream of the Yalta European Strategy (YES) 14^th Annual Meeting will be available online at yes-ukraine.org as well as on the websites of our media partners, in both English and Ukrainian.

The official Twitter of the 14^th YES Annual Meeting is @yes_ukraine, and participants and followers can include the hash tag: #YESUkraine2017

Partners of 14th YES Annual Meeting:

Arawak Energy

Hillmont Partners

International Renaissance Foundation

Media partners of 14th YES Annual Meeting:

Euronews

Dzerkalo Tyzhnya (DT.UA)

ICTV

LIGAbusinessinform

Novoye Vremya Strany (NV)

The Kyiv Post

Yalta European Strategy (YES) is a leading forum for discussing Ukraine’s European future and global context. YES fosters new ideas. It connects Ukraine to international partners, supports forces for change in the country, and builds networks of supporters for a new Ukraine worldwide.

For over a decade, YES has initiated dialog between leaders from Ukraine, the EU, the US, the Russian Federation, and beyond. Within Ukraine, it provides a platform for the government and opposition. It brings together leaders from politics, business, media, civil society and the expert community.

YES began in 2004, when Victor Pinchuk invited some 30 European leaders to debate the future of Ukraine and the EU at the first Annual Meeting.

YES Annual Meeting took place at the symbolic Livadia Palace in Yalta from 2004 to 2013. The location where Europe was divided in 1945 thus became the venue for uniting a wider Europe. After the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, the YES Annual Meeting moved to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

YES meetings have brought together heads of state and government such as Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Bill Clinton, Dalia Grybauskaitė, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Bronisław Komorowski, Mario Monti, Shimon Peres and Donald Trump. Among the speakers were also heads of international organizations like Kofi Annan, José Manuel Barroso, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Ronald Noble, James Wolfensohn, Lamberto Zannier and Robert Zoellick. Senior officials, such as Hillary Clinton, Valdis Dombrovskis, Robert Gates, Johannes Hahn, Chrystia Freeland, Victoria Nuland, Condoleezza Rice and Martin Schulz, have spoken at the meetings. In addition, thinkers and social leaders like Richard Branson, German Gref, Richard Haass, Niall Ferguson, Alexei Kudrin, Arthur Laffer, Yurii Milner, Larry Summers, Nouriel Roubini and Strobe Talbott have been among the panelists. Presidents and Prime Ministers of Ukraine, as well as Ukraine’s political, business and social leaders, regularly speak at the meetings.

The YES board includes Aleksander Kwaśniewski, President of Poland (1995-2005), Chairman of the YES Board; Carl Bildt, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sweden (2006-2014), Prime Minister of Sweden (1991-1994); Pat Cox, President of the European Parliament (2002-2004), Member of the European Parliament (1989-2004); Stephane Fouks, Vice President of Havas Group, Executive Co-Chairman of Havas Worldwide; Wolfgang Ischinger, Ambassador, Chairman of the Munich Security Conference, Senior Professor, Hertie School of Governance; Victor Pinchuk, Founder and Member of the Board, YES and Founder of the Victor Pinchuk Foundation and EastOne group; Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Founder of Rasmussen Global, Secretary General of NATO (2009-2014), Prime Minister of Denmark (2001-2009); and Javier Solana, Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (1995-1999), High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union (1999-2009), distinguished fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings Institution.

Official site: yes-ukraine.org

The Victor Pinchuk Foundation, an international, private and non-partisan philanthropic foundation based in Ukraine, was established in 2006 by businessman and philanthropist Victor Pinchuk. It empowers the young generation to change their country and the world. To this end it implements projects and builds partnership in Ukraine and worldwide. Since 2006, the Foundation has invested over 125 million USD to transform Ukraine.

The Victor Pinchuk Foundation’s projects include, among others: an all-Ukrainian network of neonatal center Cradles of Hope; the largest private scholarship program in Ukraine, Zavtra.UA; the WorldWideStudies scholarship programme for Ukrainian students studying abroad and the PinchukArtCentre, the most dynamic art centre in Ukraine and the region, which gives free-of-charge access to contemporary art to inspire new thinking. The Foundation supports the international network Yalta European Strategy (YES), a leading forum for discussing Ukraine’s European future and global context.

The foundation supports 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 Atlantic Council, the Brookings Institution, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, the Clinton Global Initiative, Amicus Europae Foundation and other nongovernmental organizations.

Official website: pinchukfund.org

Contacts for media-inquires:
E-mail: [email protected]
Tel.: +380 44 494 11 48

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