“Victory. I am obsessed with this word for 2023.” Mr Kuleba told a packed room at Ukraine House Davos. He and Mr Kurtz-Phelan, the editor of Foreign Affairs magazine discussed a wide range of topics including how to persuade Western allies to send support quicker; what foreign policy plans Ukraine has for the coming year including opening 10 new embassies throughout Africa; and what response he has to allies that are scared of Russia’s nuclear capabilities. He said that, “fear should not be a factor that impacts the decision making process. If we follow the logic of fear we will lay our hands down and sit and wait for Russia to complete the job.” He also made clear that other countries need to “change the goal from ‘Ukraine must not lose’ to ‘Ukraine must win’. This changes your foreign policy decisions.”
The next panel featured the mayors of several Ukrainian cities including Oleksandr Senkevych, Mayor of the City of Mykolaiv, Serhiy Sukhomlyn, Mayor of the City of Zhytomyr and Andriy Sadovyi, Mayor of the City of Lviv in conversation with Mustafa-Masi Nayyem (Via Video Link), Deputy Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine and Iryna Ozymok, Founder, International Mayors Summit. They discussed what Ukraine needs in order to reconstruct its destroyed cities. The main message is that old infrastructure which is not future-proof should not be restored, but rather new, and mostly green structures should be built once the war is over. Mr Sadovyi said, “It will be essential after the war when we recover our country… we will go to a higher level, it is doable and together we can do that.”
The CEO of NaftoGaz Oleksiy Chernyshov on the panel on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure highlighted that “cheap gas comes at a price. The price of stability and security. We can no longer treat Russia as a trusted supplier of electricity because it uses this supply as a weapon.” And Yaroslav Demchenkov Deputy Minister for Energy pleaded with the world that they “denuclearise Russia and stop doing business with Russian nuclear industry. A lot of countries are still dependent on Russian products… we are ready to share our experience on how to help diversify away from these sources.”
The final panel of the day and of Ukraine House Davos 2023 looked toward the future and “Ending the War” both on the information and military battlefield. The panel featured Hanna Maliar, Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine; Kersti Kaljulaid, former President of Estonia (2016-2021); Yehor Cherniev, Member of Parliament of Ukraine; and Oleh Derevianko, Chairman of Information Systems Security Partners. There is a direct connection between the information battlefield and military battlefield as made clear by Mr Derevianko “The very war we are facing today was possible because Russia were winning the information war in the first place. What is the most important thing we are talking about here at Davos and everywhere? It’s that Ukraine needs weapons. What are the obstacles? The fear of escalation. And where is this coming from? The information war.”
Ukraine House Davos was made possible this year thanks to the generous sponsors, most notably the Temerty Foundation and our media partner Parimatch Ukraine.
