On Tuesday, 29 October 2024, the Foreign Policy Research Institute and the Centre for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies, with organisational support of the GDIP, held a roundtable discussion entitled Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Victory Plan and Its Implementation Strategy.
Hryhorii Perepelytsia, Foreign Policy Research Institute Director, Professor at the Department of International Relations and Foreign Policy of the Educational and Scientific Institute of International Relations of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Doctor of Political Science moderated the event.
During his opening remarks, Mr Perepelytsia briefly analysed the topics discussed within the previous roundtables held at the Media Centre since the beginning of russiaʼs full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He outlined the main foreign policy trends affecting Ukraine’s security and the main events at the global level, emphasising that the world is on the verge of World War III, where the goal of the Global South is to change the world order in favour of authoritarianism.
‘Unfortunately, the West is losing this Third World War at the very beginning. Therefore, these global trends cannot but affect the russian-Ukrainian war, particularly on the battlefield between the Ukrainian Defence Forces and russian troops. Today, Ukraine is fighting against the military coalition of the Global South on its own, with no army allies. The US aim in the russian-Ukrainian war is to ensure that Ukraine does not lose and russia does not win, but this will only lead to the failure of Ukraine and the entire Western world. Meanwhile, the latter is neither ready nor able to confront the Global South in the Third World War. Actually, this already begs the question: what is victory? All of these questions are the subject of todayʼs roundtable discussion. There are a lot of problems, and, accordingly, Volodymyr Zelenskyyʼs Plan appeared in a tense situation and was aimed at a short-term period to overcome this crisis, both political and militaryʼ, — the speaker noted.
The roundtable involved the following experts: Oleksandr Musiienko, Head of the Centre for Military and Legal Studies; Valentyn Badrak, Director of the Centre for Army, Conversion, and Disarmament Studies; Artem Viunnyk, Director of Athlon Avia SPC (development and production of unmanned systems for the Armed Forces of Ukraine); Oleksandr Khara, expert of the Centre for Defence Strategies; Mykola Sunhurovskyi, Director of Military Programmes at the Razumkov Centre.