News

Institute of World Policy held on September 19 in Kiev the next meeting of the Strategic Discussion Club “Strong Ukraine: How to Ensure Security?”The event was attended by the leading experts, diplomats of the EU member states, and journalists from all over Ukraine. Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of Austria to Ukraine Wolf Dietrich Heim, representative of the Embassy of Kingdom of Norway in Ukraine Sihbyorn Litland, Associated Expert at the Institute for Development and Social Initiatives “Viitorul” (IDIS) in Chisinau Leonid Litra, Scientific Director of the School of Political Analysis (NaUKMA) Oleksiy Haran, and experts of the IWP – Director Alyona Getmanchuk and Deputy Director Sergiy Solodkyy visited Zaporizhzhya. Lithuanian political observer Rimvydas Valatka was invited by the IWP to take part in the debate in Zaporizhzhya.
Together with local experts, community activists and journalists, representatives of local authorities they discussed the most important issues of Ukraine’s national security.
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Director of the IWP Alyona Getmanchuk
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Representative of the Embassy of Norway in Ukraine Sihbyorn Litland and IWP Deputy Director Sergiy Solodkyy
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Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of Austria to Ukraine Wolf Dietrich Heim

Experts of the IWP conducted an informal survey “To Hear Zaporizhzhya” among the local participants. Almost a hundred persons were asked to express their opinion what Ukraine should do to ensure its security. The poll had surprising results: 43% of the participants voted for the NATO membership, 26% – the status of major non-NATO ally of the United States, 21% – neutrality, and 10% said that Ukraine should “return itself a nuclear status”. No one has chosen the option “membership in the CSTO”.

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The discussion was organized as a part of the project “Strategic Discussion Club in the Ukrainian Regions”, supported by the Norwegian government, international organization “Internews” and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). This project is a continuation of the previous successful project within which the IWP held six meetings of Strategic Discussion Club in Kyiv last year.

The First Regional Strategic Discussion Club was held in Kharkiv on the 26th of June this year. Well-known political columnist Grzegorz Gromadski from Poland took part in the event. Photo report from the Strategy Discussion Club in Kharkov is available here.