Kyiv Seminars for Senior UA MOD/JNSDC/MVD Officials

VIII. CUSUR & ‘Kyiv Seminars for Senior UA MOD/NSDC/MVD Officials’ (2025)

The several visits of young, fresh-minded, reform-oriented UA military commanders and national security analysts to various top-flight foreign policy think tanks and institutes of higher diplomatic or military learning in DC in the latter part of 2014 (prompted in good part by CUSUR invitations to its Occasional Briefings) inspired the UA National Security & Defense Council to propose a slightly different arrangement for similar discussions/conversations in 2015.

CUSUR was asked to see if key members of its US-UA Working Group might not be interested in spending a week of their time engaged in discussions in Kyiv ‘devoted to the art of strategic & tactical planning in the face of a new form of warfare not yet understood by the most able students of military science’. A number of the Center’s partner organizations were approached as well. 

The response by all parties involved was in the affirmative. And a plan was hatched with the understanding that matters needed to be expedited sooner rather than later. CUSUR (and its closest partner, the AFPC) agreed to organize at least four visits to Ukraine (2015, 2016, 2017, 2024). The head of CUSUR’s Washington Bureau, Mykola Hryckowian, was involved in the first excursion; AFPC President Herman Pirchner was involved in the second and the third; both were involved a last mission. All included representatives from a number of the finest think tanks in DC: American Foreign Policy Council; Jamestown Foundation; Hudson Institute and the Potomac Foundation.  Their work proved extremely fruitful and confirmed that all parties were ready for a more formal ‘follow-up’ arrangement—a set of ‘lectures/colloquia’ conducted in Kyiv for Ukraine’s top level ‘security’ personnel.

In the 2017-2018 period – following the third mentioned mission, CUSUR (after studying several venues) settled on a venue for the stated project: the Kyiv Mohyla Academy National University. During 2018-2019, several dozen senior UA NSDC and MOD officials were interviewed to participate in the projected lecture series; equally, several of the finest students of ‘the contemporary art of war’ hailing from the US, Canada and EU were asked to partake in the process as instructors. The spring of 2020 was targeted as the time the ‘colloquia’ would commence their work. The pandemic slowed the process in the latter half of 2020 and throughout 2021 and the RU-UA war put a full stop to effort in 2022, 2023 and 2024, but the Center is convinced that work in the area can recommence in spring 2025. The last AFPC-CUSUR mission (2024) confirmed that the interest was still there through meetings with both the president of Kyiv Mohyla Academy NU (proposed venue), Dr. Serhiy Kvit, and the new head of the Ukrainian Strategic Initiative (now affiliated with KMA-NU), Ostap Kvit (who would be tasked with running the Kyiv Seminars).

Given CUSUR’s increasing involvement in Kyiv-centered projects, the issue of opening a fully operational Kyiv CUSUR office was touched upon once more in the 2019-2021 period. The Center decided to give the matter very serious consideration; a project director, Ms. Chrystina Balko, was appointed and tasked to find a premise that would serve as the Kyiv CUSUR office and conference space. In January 2022, a space was found (on Kyiv’s “Embassy Row”) that fit all CUSUR’s needs, but again the RU-UA war put a stop to any further activity in the matter. And again, CUSUR intends to see if 2025 will allow the resumption of work in that direction.