Ukraine’s Quest for Mature Nation Statehood RT IV: Ukraine’s Transition to a Developed Market Economy saw the introduction of a new ingredient to the proceedings – a series of business to business networking sessions that ran parallel to the traditional symposium.

The participants were so taken by the idea that the organizers were advised to turn the B2B gatherings into a unified stand alone event. The advice was taken and, in the immediate term, resulted in a highly successful US-UA Business Networking Forum (held March 2005 in New York City using four venues: the Ukrainian Institute of America/NYU/Columbia University and the Union League Club).

In the longer term, the episode saw the launching of a specialized US-Ukrainian business/investment conference series:<

• US-UA Business Networking Forum [I]
• Ukraine Business/Investment Forum
• Ukraine-North America Investment Forum
• Ukraine Business and Investment Forum: Euro 2012
• US-Ukrainian Business & Investment Colloquium (V)
• A UEAF “fusion” symposium: US-Ukraine Business Networking Series Forum VI [January 2012/Kyiv]
• US-Ukraine Business Networking Series Forum VII: International Investment Forum and Road Show
• US-Ukraine Business Networking Servies XI: Let the Reconstruction Process Begin – But Who, What, How, When, Where

During its short tenure, the US-Ukrainian Business Networking Forum Series has hosted an authoritative set of high-level officials and corporate leaders from both Ukraine and the United States:

Ukrainian government leaders who have participated as major speakers include Prime Ministers Viktor Yuri Yekhanurov and Viktor Yanukovych; Ukrainian Industry Minister Volodymyr Shandra; Ukrainian Minister of Justice Roman Zwarych; Ukrainian Economy Ministers Volodymyr Makukha, Bohdan Danylyshyn and Petro Poroshenko; Energy Ministers Ivan Plachkov and Yuri Boyko, and head of the Joint Stock Company the State Export-Import Bank of Ukraine Viktor Kapustin; Ambassadors Oleh Shamshur, Oleksandr Mostyk and Yuri Sergeyev.

US government leaders who have participated as major speakers include: Assistant Trade Representative Catherine Novelli, Assistant Secretary for Commerce Al Frink, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Nancy Lee, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Matt Bryza, Ambassador John Herbst, Representatives Sander Levin and Curt Weldon

Among the major US & international companies that have participated in past conferences are CEOs and senior executives from: JP Morgan, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Julius Baer, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Firebird Management, American Century Funds, UBS Securities, Fidelity Investments, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Wolfensohn and Company, Lazard Kaplan International, US Export Import Bank, NASDAQ, New York Stock Exchange, ENI, Royal Dutch Shell, Halliburton, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, Chadbourne and Parke, Goldman Sachs International, Microsoft, Intel, Ernst and Young, Northland Power, PBN Company, Delta Airlines, Johnson and Johnson, Kraft Foods, Phillip Morris, Boeing/Sea Launch, Motorola, Calyon Bank, PERN, Vanco Energy, Westinghouse, Alliance Technology Group, Salans Partners, Pfizer, Hitachi America.

Among the major Ukraine based and Ukraine-focused companies, banks, and funds, the following have taken part: Dragon Capital , Horizon, UkrTelekom, Ukraine Export-Import Bank, Concorde Capital, Millennium Capital, Industrial Union of the Donbas, Sigma-Bleyzer, System Capital Management, D-Tek, Naftohaz Ukraine, UkrTransNafta, UkrNafta, Renaissance Capital, XXI Century, SoftServe Ukraine, Shevchenko-Didkovsky Partners, Farmak, Stirol, Pivdenmash, AeroSvit, Antonov, Kvazar Micro, and Gregory Arber.

Dentons LLP and CUSUR organized a special business gathering entitled Taking Measure of Ukraine’s Challenges and Opportunities in 2015 in the winter of said year in New York that focused on Ukraine’s efforts to revitalize its economy and provide for governmental accountability. CUSUR will partner again with Dentons LLP to focus on Leading An Economic Recovery in Ukraine By Putting One’s Best Foot Forward: Promoting Four Key Areas of Enterprise in the April 2017.

The US-Ukrainian Energy Dialogue Series began as a follow-up to a notion first broached by US Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman, who, during his visit to Kyiv in the summer of 2005, stressed the need for a serious set of discussions, formal and informal, on energy issues between the appropriate governmental, non-governmental and corporate representatives of the United States and Ukraine.

Senator Richard Lugar, in his keynote address to Ukraine’s Quest RT VI [September 2005] restated Secretary Bodman’s initiative and challenged the RT organizers to organize “a US-UA energy forum” by promising to help with an appropriate venue on Capitol Hill. The RT organizers got to work immediately and with two months, the US-Ukrainian Energy Dialogue Series was born.

Five such forums have now been held: the inaugural event in Washington DC, in Nov 2006, a very popular follow-up in Houston, in May 2006, a return event in DC in 2008, featuring an important keynote by the patron of the Series, Sen. Lugar, and a recent gathering held in Kyiv (December 2012) to highlight Ukraine’s need to seek ‘energy independence. In the wake of Euro-Maidan (August 2014), CUSUR, in conjunction with AFPC, the Kyiv Energy Club ‘Q’ and the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine ran a US-UA Energy-Security Fusion Event.

• US-Ukraine Energy Dialogue I
• Ukraine-Int’l Energy Roundtable: Strengthening UA’s Energy Diversity
• US-Ukraine Energy Dialogue III
• US-Ukraine Energy Dialogue IV
• US-Ukraine Energy-Security Fusion Dialogue V

Major Western energy and energy-related concerns that have participated in the stated gatherings include:

Cardinal Resources, AES, Northland Power, Holtec, Hunt Oil, Aspect Energy, Vanco, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Shell, Westinghouse, Hitachi America, Safeguards Inc., Allied Technologies Group, Halliburton, PFC Energy, Devon, Marathon Oil, Trident Oil.

CUSUR anticipates that late summer 2017 will see US-UA Energy Dialogue VI in Kyiv.

The origins of the Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic Future International Forum Series can be traced to the gratifying, often exhilarating, work that the all the various sponsors and patrons have done together during the last decade organizing the Ukraine’s Quest for Mature Nation Statehood Roundtable Series.

In late 2006, the UA Quest RTS organizers decided to harness the generated momentum and channel it into a new, internationally based discussion series about the single most critical issue facing Ukraine today-i.e., its Euro-Atlantic Future-that would begin June (2007) in Kyiv, Ukraine’s gold domed capital.

The anticipated first gathering, the Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic Future International Forum I was held in Kyiv, at the Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine, on June 11-13 2007. More that 80 government and non-governmental representatives from among Ukraine’s neighbors and partners, including the Czech Republic, Denmark, Norway, Lithuania, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, the Slovak Republic, Turkey, United Kingdom and United States, spoke at the three day conference. Nearly 320 interested individuals registered to be participants in the event.

Seeing the interest shown in the inaugural event, the organizers decided to chance running three events a year: one in Washington, a second in Ukraine [Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Donetsk] and a final annual gathering in one of the various capitals of Europe [Berlin, Warsaw, Brussels, London, Paris] with Ottawa as a possible candidate as well; the first would remain under the Quest name and the last two would carry the new Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic Future moniker.

Seven UEAF symposia have now been held, including a long-promised UEAF forum in Canada:

• Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic Future: International Forum I [Kyiv/June 2007]
• Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic Future: International Forum II [Kyiv/June 2008]
• Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic Future: International Forum III [Brussels/April 2009]
• Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic Future: International Forum IV [Kharkiv/June 2009]
• Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic Future: International Forum V [Kyiv/January 2012]
• Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic Future: International Forum VI [Ottawa/March 2012]
• Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic Future: International Forum VII [London/December 2012]

   

In 2013 (September 23), the UEAF Forum held a joint event with the UA Quest RT Series focusing on  Divining the Outcome of the [November] EP Summit in Vilnius.

Also kindly note UEAF/IF affiliate events:

ACUS/CUSUR Event (featuring: B. Tarasyuk, H. Nemyria, K. Hryshchenko) [Oct. 15, 2007]

• Black Sea Synergy Forum (Odessa-Istanbul) [October 21-23, 2007]
• ACUS/CP Event (featuring: V. Yanukovych, H. Kissinger, O. Motsyk) [Sept. 19, 2010]
• Ukraine 2010: Continuity or Change in PL-UA & DE-UA Relations [December 16-17, 2010]
• PAUCI/Ukraine: Relations with the World (Washington, DC) [April 7, 2011]
• Ukraine-20 Years of Independence: Politics, Economy, Society (Warsaw) [Dec. 16, 2011]
• UEAF Affiliate Event: 2012 Parliamentary Elections (Warsaw) [Dec. 6–7, 2012]
• UEAF Affiliate Event: Quo Vadis Ukraine – 2013? (Warsaw) [Dec. 5–6, 2013] [PDF of program in Pol.]
• UEAF Affiliate Event: Eastern Policy Forum (Warsaw) [Dec 14-15, 2014]

In his remarks at the UA Quest Roundtable V Patron Dinner in September 2004, Representative Curt Weldon suggested a regularly scheduled set of discussions that would track the progress of Ukraine’s professed “Euro-Atlantic” ambitions specifically in the realm of “security affairs” was needed.

He further suggested that the forums concentrate on two core tasks: (1) examining/evaluating Ukraine’s attempts to deepen “strategic” bilateral ties with the United States and (2) monitoring the pace of Ukraine’s NATO accession process. He promised to sponsor all such discussions and to provide the venues for the said gatherings on Capitol Hill.

CUSUR, newly formed at the time, and the American Foreign Policy Council, a long-time sponsoring organization of the UA Quest Series, took Rep. Weldon at his word and placed upon themselves the responsibility of setting in motion a “dialogue series” for senior-level representatives from each nation’s respective military establishments to exchange views on a wide range of defense-related issues.

The dialogues, planned as annual events, would be geared to review joint operations by US and Ukrainian armed forces from the Balkans to Iraq as well as examine other areas of bilateral “strategic” interest, including what Rep. Weldon fondly hoped would be US-Ukraine cooperation on Missile Defense. And, as envisioned by the good Congressman, the discussions would monitor the pace of Ukraine’s NATO accession process.

The US-Ukrainian Security Dialogue Series has now run seven major events:

• US-UA Security Dialogue I
• US-UA Security Dialogue II
• US-Ukraine Security Dialogue III
• US-Ukraine Security Dialogue IV
• US-Ukraine Energy-Security Fusion Dialogue V
• US-Ukraine Security Dialogue VI
• US-Ukraine Security Dialogue VII

Speakers have included:

• US Representative Curt Weldon (Vice Chair/HR Homeland Security Committee)
• UA Ambassador to the US Oleh Shamshur, Dr. Jennifer Moroney (RAND)
• Cooperative Threat Reduction Director James Reid (Dept. of Defense)
• Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Kramer
• US Dept. of State Ukraine Political Officer Dr. Paul Carter
• Maj. Gen. Leonid Holopatyuk (UA MOD)
• General Designer Dmitry Kiva (Antonov Aerospace)
• Dr. Yuri Alekseyev (UA National Space Agency)
• Dr. Celeste Wallander (Georgetown University)
• Deputy [& UA Astronaut] Leonid Kadenyuk (Rada National Security & Defense Committee)
• Principal Director for Eurasia Scott Schless (US Department of Defense)
• Maj. Gen. Serhiy Bezlushchenko (UA MOD)
  Ukraine Desk Officer CDR David Fisher (Joint Staff/J-5, U.S. Department of Defense)
• Amb. Steve Pifer (Center for Strategic and International Studies)
• Dr. Steven Larabbee (RAND)
• Amb. John Herbst (National Defense University)
• Atlantic Council Vice President Damon Wilson
• Former Head of the Security Service of Ukraine Valentyn Nalyvaichenko
• Dr. Lumomyr Luciuk (CA Royal Military Academy)
• Former Foreign Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Ohryzko
• Atlantic Council Senior Fellow & Fmr. DOD DAS for Europe Ian Brzezinski
• Senior Fellow James Sherr (Royal Institute of International Affairs/ Chatham House)
• Policy Analyst and Program Executive Amanda Paul (EPC-EU)
• Amb. Andrew Robinson (Carelton University)
• American Foreign Policy Council President Herman Pirchner
• First Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine Leonid Polyakov
• Dr. Norman Bailey (Haifa University)

Early 2017 will see the running of US-Ukraine Security Dialogue VIII in Washington DC.