Lviv Security Forum 2018 will take place on October 24-26, 2018 in Lviv, Ukraine. The main topic of the Forum is “The Economy of War and the War of Economics.” Respected experts and public officials from more than 10 countries (including USA, Canada, Great Britain, Belgium, Moldova, Georgia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Sweden, Poland, Germany, Czech Republic) will be participating.
This major event will commence with the speech of Edward Lucas, an influentual British analyst, journalist and publicist currently working as senior fellow of the Centre for European Policy Analysis, a U.S. think tank.
“Edward Lucas is one of the most authoritative professionals, who started to acknowledge consequences of the Russian economic (raw materials, more precisely) expansion many years ago. Not only was he aware of the significance of this problem, but he warned the entire civilized world of the aggressive intentions of Moscow.» – Oksana Syroid, co-chair of the Security Forum and Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
In 2008, Lucas wrote a book «The New Cold War: How the Kremlin Menaces both Russia and the West», in which he warned the West about the insidiousness of Kremlin’s plans, particularly in the energy sphere. Only now Europe and USA are starting to understand the dangers of the trap for the European Union members created by Kremlin under the disguise of the Nord Stream pipelines. This will be one of the topics for panel discussions.
Among other topics to be highlighted during the forum are the following:
1) Economy of war or the war of economics
– “Wars for resources: how did they change throughout the history”
– “International agreements as an economic solution to security problems”
2)Asymmetric wars
– “Critical infrastructure as vulnerability and power”
– “Policy with respect to temporarliy occupied territories as a mechanism of influence on the aggressor”
3)Building powerful defense
– “Defense as a modern notion”
– “Efficient army model for Ukraine”
4)The future of the occupied territories in Eastern Europe – “The way of freedom or unity?”
– “Peacekeeping mission – a solution or a trap?”
– “Strategy of reintegration or deoccupation?”
Among the top speakers of the Lviv Security Forum are Reka Szemerkenyi, Vice President of CEPA (created by the current U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Wess Mitchell); Steven Blockmans, Senior Fellow and the Head of the EU foreign policy (CEPS); Glen Grant, Lieutenant Colonel of the British Army (ret.) and the expert of the Ukrainian Institute of the Future; Glen Howard, President of the Jamestown Foundation and many others.
Ben Hodges, Lieutenant General of the US army (ret.), who until last year was the Commander of the US Allied Land Command in Europe, and participated in Lviv Security Forum in 2017, this year will be the honorary co-chair of the Forum’s Organizing Committee.
The Lviv Security Forum 2018 will take place on October 24-26 at the Metropolitan Sheptytsky Center of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. The organizers of the Forum are: NGO «Prosvita Institute», Ukrainian Catholic University, City Institute, and Lviv city council. This year’s Forum is being held in partnership with the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation of the German Marshall Fund, the Hanns Seidel Foundation in Ukraine, the International Renaissance Foundation.
