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