Steven Blank
Steven Blank is currently Senior Fellow on Russia at the American Foreign Policy Council; prior to his present position, Dr. Blank spent 24 years, 1989-2013, as a Professor of National Security Studies at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, PA. His expertise covers the entire Russian and post-Soviet region and he has also written extensively on defense strategy, arms control, information warfare, energy issues, US foreign and defense policy, European, and Asian security.
Ariel Cohen
Ariel Cohen is a well-known international expert on Ukrainian, Russian, Eurasian, European and Middle Eastern foreign, security and economic affairs; U.S. and global energy security; terrorism; organized crime and other political risk factors. Dr. Cohen is presently Director of the Center for Energy, Natural Resources and Geopolitcs at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security; for many years previous, he served as Senior Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies and International Energy Security at the Heritage Foundation, working closely with Congressmen and Congressional staff members and cabinet-level foreign decision makers. He has over 20 years experience in research project management, government relations/political public relations, journalistic writing, and broadcasting.
Mykhailo Honchar
Mykhailo Honchar is presently President of the Center for Global Studies, Strategies XXI. Prior to his current appointment, Mr. Honchar served a good many years as Director of Energy Programs at the NOMOS Center and quickly accumulated a well founded reputation for being one of the finest students and prognosticators of energy developments in Eastern Europe.
Phillip Karber
Phillip Karber is presently President of the Potomac Foundation and concurrently teaches at Georgetown University. He is also part of a very important tandem, along with Gen (ret.) Wes Clark, that was kept the Washington US Congress and the Wsashington abreast of events in Ukraine during last turbulent year. Dr. Karber has a long background in arms control and defense. In the late 1960s, he was on the staff of the Congressional Joint Committee of Atomic Energy at the time of the NPT, SALT and ABM agreements. In the mid-1970s he Directed NSSM/Project 186, the National Security Council mandated net assessment of US-Soviet forces and in the early 1980s was the Founding Director of the DoD Strategic Concepts Development Center, serving as strategy advisor” to the Secretary of Defense and JCS Chairman. Prior to the Reykjavik Summit, he ran the only US Government study of the feasibility and requirements needed to achieve President Reagan”s vision of A World Without Nuclear Weapons.”
David Kramer
David J. Kramer is presently Director for Human Rights & Democracy at the McCain Institute. Prior to joining the Institute, he was President of Freedom House, which he joined in October 2010; he concurrently taught at the Elliott School for Internatinal Affairs at The George Washington University. Earlier, Mr. Kramer served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor from March 2008 to January 2009. He also was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, responsible for Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus affairs as well as regional non-proliferation issues. Previously, he served as a Professional Staff Member in the Secretary of State”s Office of Policy Planning.
Kostyiantyn Mashovets
Kostyiantyn Mashovets, currently working with the Center for Defense Reform, has served several posts in the Ministry of Defense in Ukraine and the Center for Military-Political Studies. Earlier, Colonel Mashovets served in a tank regiment and was a senior officer in the press service of the General Staff. As the head of a research group at the Department of Military History at the National Defense University of Defense of Ukraine he has published several analyses of the current conflict in eastern Ukraine
Andriy Parubiy
Andriy Parubiy is First Deputy Speaker of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada. Mr. Parubiy was one of the leaders of the Orange Revolution in 2004. In the 2007 parliamentary elections, he was voted into the Ukrainian parliament on an Our Ukraine ticket. In 2012 he was re-elected into parliament on the party list of ‘Batkivshychna’. From December 2013 to February 2014 Parubiy served as commandant of Euromaidan. coordinator of the volunteer security corps for the mainstream protesters. In March 2014, He was appointed Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine. As Secretary of the Council, Parubiy oversaw the “anti–terrorist” operation against pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine during the June-August phase, when Ukrainian forces proved capable of effective counter strikes against enemy forces. In October 2014, he returned to the Rada on the Narodnyj Front ticket and was elected to his present position.
Anatoliy Pinchuk
Anatoliy Pinchuk is the President of the All-Ukrainian NGO Ukrainian Strategy”, co-chairman of the Civic Assembly of Ukraine (CAU) and a member of the Coordination Council of the Coalition on small and medium businesses. He has served on the Central Election Commission of Ukraine and is one of the founders and Vice President of the Association of Young Ukrainian Politicians and Political Scientists.
Herman Pirchner
Herman Pirchner, in 1982, became the founding President of the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC), a non-profit public policy organization headquartered in Washington, DC. Under his leadership, AFPC has hosted the Washington visits of hundreds of foreign officials, ranging from the Prime Minister of Malta to the Prime Minister of Russia; conducted hundreds of briefings for members of Congress and their staffs; and organized dozens of fact-finding missions abroad for current and former senior American officials. AFPC”s publication program includes the sponsorship of numerous articles, monographs and books. In recent years, AFPC authors have appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Baltimore Sun, and the New York Post, among other prominent newspapers and magazines.
Olekiy Skrypnyk
Olekiy Skrypnyk is Deputy Head of the Science and Education Committee of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine; his committee will be critical to any process of economic revitalization in Ukraine. Mr. Skrypnyk was third on the party list of ‘Self Reliance’, a coalition of progress-minded civil society organizations that decided to turn to the political arena for solutions, during the October 2014 parliamentary elections. Once elected to the body, he left behind his previous life as an award winning CEO of ELEKS Software.