Securing Ukraine’s Future

FROMAN: Good morning, everybody, and welcome. My name is Mike Froman. I’m president of the Council on Foreign Relations. And it’s a great honor to welcome you here all today to our symposium on Securing Ukraine’s Future.

About six months ago, the Council launched a special initiative on Securing Ukraine’s Future, led by senior fellow Paul Stares. The initiative is really focused on three areas: Achieving peace, how can a just and durable peace deal be reached; preparing for and realizing Ukraine’s economic reconstruction and recovery, what needs to be done to boost economic growth and rebuild critical infrastructure; and, thirdly, building a framework for Europe’s long-term security. In these areas, as well as the state of play in Ukraine, those will drive the issues of today’s symposium.

In a moment, we’ll play a short video that explains some of our work in this area, but before we do I’d like to provide just a little framing context. Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine just marked its third anniversary just a week ago. And President Trump is determined to bring a swift end to the conflict. Needless to say, we are meeting at a particularly dynamic time...

FIX: So welcome to the second session of today’s symposium, titled Ukraine and the Future of European Security. I’m Liana Fix. I’m the fellow for Europe here at the Council on Foreign Relations, and I’ll be presiding over this discussion. Thanks for staying with us for this, and there will be another panel afterwards. I’m more than delighted to discuss “Ukraine and the Future of European Security,” to discuss what General Kellogg has presented today morning, with a fantastic lineup of speakers.

Let me introduce first—he is going to join us virtually—this is Pavlo Klimkin—(inaudible, technical difficulties). He is foreign minister of—former foreign minister of Ukraine. He’s also a nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Hi, Pavlo.

We also have with us Philip M. Breedlove. He’s the former supreme allied commander Europe, and he is now a distinguished professor and CETS senior fellow at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech. Thanks so much for joining us.

And here on stage I have with me for Fiona Hill, who’s now a senior fellow at Bookings but formerly was the former deputy assistant and to the president and senior director for European and Russian...

CREBO-REDIKER: So welcome and thank you for sticking around for our third panel today. I think we had a good segue from the last panel into the conversation on “Reconstructing Ukraine.” This is, obviously, session three, Council on Foreign Relations, “Reconstructing Ukraine,” as our symposium closes.

I’m Heidi Crebo-Rediker. I’m a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. I’m delighted to have two of the leading thought leaders and experienced negotiators, and basically my go-to people on all things Ukraine here in Washington.

This is on the record. And I think what we’re going to do for the first thirty minutes or so is have a conversation amongst ourselves about the—about literally what we need to do, how we need to think pragmatically, what has been done, what is ongoing, because there has been reconstruction going on throughout the second round of the war, post-2022. And so I want to touch on that, as well as what the plans are in the future and what still needs to be done.

So, introducing Natalie Jaresko. She is the former finance minister of Ukraine from 2014 to 2016. And she’s the—she’s also a CFR member. But she’s also the chair of...