President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko to open the 15th Yalta European Strategy Annual Meeting Plenary Sessions with His Speech

The plenary sessions of the 15^th Yalta European Strategy (YES) Annual Meeting will start with a speech by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. The discussion between the forum audience and the President will be moderated by Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The 15^th Annual Meeting of Yalta European Strategy (YES) – “The Next Generation of Everything” – will be held on September 13-15, 2018 in Kyiv. Over 400 leading politicians, diplomats, businessmen, civil activists and experts from 28 countries will take part in the conference organized by the international forum YES in partnership with the Victor Pinchuk Foundation.

The forum’s first day will start off discussing the “big picture” of the global future as seen by different experts. The sessions will continue with discussions of the future of democracy in an age of disinformation and elections meddling, the futures of the US and Europe, the impact of new trade wars to the future of the global economy, and the future of NATO. Special attention will be paid to the promise of blockchain technologies. The concluding panel of the first day will feature an in depth discussion on creating a digital society with President of Estonia Kersti Kaljulaid.

The speakers will include: Alejandro Alvargonzález, Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs and Security Policy, NATO; Tony Blair, Executive Chairman of the Tony Blair Institute and former UK Prime Minister; Jared Cohen, Founder and CEO, Jigsaw; Valdis Dombrovskis, Vice-President for the Euro and Social Dialogue, also in charge of Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union, European Commission; Niall Ferguson, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Bill Ford, Chief Executive Officer, General Atlantic; Franco Frattini, President of SIOI, Special Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office for the Transdniestrian Settlement Process, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Italy (2008-2011); Yasmin Green, Director of research and development, Jigsaw; Pavlo Klimkin, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine; Ray Kurzweil, inventor, author, futurist; Bernard-Henri Lévy, Philosopher and Writer; Michael McFaul, U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014), Stanford Professor and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow; Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Founder of Rasmussen Global, Secretary General of NATO (2009-2014), Prime Minister of Denmark (2001-2009); Condoleezza Rice, 66th U.S. Secretary of State (2005-2009); Hernando de Soto, President, Institute for Liberty and Democracy; Larry Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor, Harvard University; Manuel Valls, Prime Minister of the French Republic (2014 – 2016).

In addition to Richard Haass, Stephen Sackur, host of BBC HARDtalk, Gillian Tett, U.S. Managing Editor of the Financial Times, and Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, will moderate the discussions.

The official Twitter handle of the 15^th YES Annual Meeting is @yes_ukraine, and participants and followers can include the hash tag: #YESUkraine2018

Partners of 15th YES Annual Meeting:

Arawak Energy
Hillmont Partners
lifecell
International Renaissance Foundation
Western NIS Enterprise Fund (WNISEF)

Media partners of 15th YES Annual Meeting:

Dzerkalo Tyzhnya (DT.UA)
European Pravda
ICTV
Liga.net
Novoye Vremya Strany (NV)
PRYAMIY Channel
Radio NV
The Kyiv Post