On March 31st, the first round of Ukraine’s presidential election takes place. The unpredictable and scandal-rich election occurs at a critical time. Five years after the Euromaidan Revolution, Ukraine’s key structural problems remain unresolved, while the conflict with Russia persists. The result of the election will have a profound impact on the country’s internal developments and its relations with the West. It will also affect the outcome of the forthcoming parliamentary elections, which will take place in October. The purpose of the seminar is to discuss the presidential campaign and the election’s implications for the future of the country. The event will focus on both regional and general aspects of Ukraine’s presidential race and offer an external analytical perspective.
Puhujat
Ryhor Nizhnikau is a Senior Research Fellow in the EU’s Eastern
Neighbourhood and Russia programme at FIIA. He works on Russia’s and
EU’s policies towards Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus as well as domestic
developments in these countries. His current research focus includes the
study of Ukraine’s reforms after the Euromaidan Revolution. He received his
PhD from Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, University of Tartu. His
recent publications include EU Induced Institutional Change in Post-Soviet
Space: Promoting Reforms in Moldova and Ukraine (Routledge, 2018).
Andrew Wilson is a Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign
Relations. His topics of focus include Ukraine, comparative politics of
democratisation in the post-Soviet states, and political technology. Wilson
is Professor in Ukrainian Studies at University College London. He has worked
extensively on the comparative politics of the post-Soviet states since 1990. His
book Ukraine Crisis: What the West Needs to Know was published by Yale in 2014.
He is currently working on a book on “The Globalisation of Political Technology”.
Volodymyr Dubovyk is an Associate Professor at the Department of
International Relations and Director of the Center for International Studies at
Odessa I. I. Mechnikov National University (Ukraine). His areas of expertise
include Ukraine, Transatlantic Relations, the U.S., and Black Sea security.
Dubovyk has conducted research at the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars (1997, 2006-2007), at the Center for International and
Security Studies at the University of Maryland (2002), taught at the University
of Washington (Seattle) in 2013 and at St. Edwards university/University of
Texas (Austin) in 2016-17. He is the co-author of Ukraine and European Security
(Macmillan, 1999) and has published numerous articles on US-Ukraine
relations, regional and international security, and Ukraine’s foreign policy.
Puheenjohtaja
Arkady Moshes is Programme Director for the Russia, EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood and Eurasia research programme. He is also a member of the Programme on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia (PONARS Eurasia) at George Washington University. Moshes’ areas of expertise include Russian foreign policy, European-Russian relations as well as internal and foreign policy of Ukraine and Belarus. He received his Ph.D in history of international relations from the Russian Academy of Sciences (1992).
Before moving to Finland in 2002, he had been working in the Institute of Europe in Moscow since 1988. From 2008 to 2015 he was an Associate Fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Program at Chatham House. From 2017 to 2022 he was a member of EU-Russia Expert Network (EUREN). He has been a visiting scholar at the Danish Institute for International Studies (2002) and the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University (2016), a Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2007) and a regular guest lecturer at the NATO Defence College (2005-10, 2013-15) and Geneva Center for Security Policy (1998-2022).
Arkady Moshes has authored a large number of academic and analytical publications and is a frequent media commentator.
He co-edited “A Slavic Triangle? Present and Future Relations Between Russia, Ukraine and Belarus” (Swedish National Defence College, 2002), “Russia as a Network State: What Works in Russia When State Institutions Do Not” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), “What has remained of the USSR: Exploring the erosion of the post-Soviet space” (FIIA, 2019) and “Russian Policy toward Belarus after 2020 At a Turning Point?” (Lexington Books, 2023) and contributed articles to, among others, Security Dialogue, International Affairs, Post-Soviet Affairs and Demokratizatsiya.