Expert Roundtable:

The Future of the Peace Process in Ukraine

Event Description

PILPG hosted a conversation with experts regarding potential avenues for peace in Ukraine from both a legal and policy perspective on May 6 from 12 pm to 1 pm EDT.

Tensions between Russia and Ukraine have been rising since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. The first military outbreak between both countries began in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea and an armed conflict erupted in Ukraine's eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. Since the signing of the Minsk Accords in 2015, the conflict had turned into a frozen conflict.

Over the past couple of months, Ukraine has again become the main headline around the globe. On February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full scale invasion of Ukraine, which has thus far led to over two thousand civilian deaths and massive destruction of Ukrainian cities, including areas around the capital Kyiv. In response to these actions and the contravention of core international legal principles, the international community has imposed fierce sanctions targeting every sector of the Russian economy. With the slowing down of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, both sides have begun peace negotiations, however, there has been little breakthrough.

During this event our panelists discussed the recent developments between Russia and Ukraine, talk through potential legal and policy options for peace moving forward, and provided their perspectives on the essential elements needed to negotiate peace in Ukraine. This event was moderated by PILPG Managing Director Professor Milena Sterio.

This event is part of the PILPG Thought Leadership Initiative. The Initiative focuses on prominent international law and international affairs topics and organizes monthly expert roundtables to share expertise and reflections from our work on peace negotiations, post-conflict constitution drafting, and war crimes prosecution.

Event Recording (ENGLISH)

Speakers

**Bohdan Vivitsky**
Bohdan Vitvitsky retired from the U.S. Justice Department in 2014. From 2007 to 2009, he served as a Resident Legal Advisor at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine. In 2016 at the request of Ukrainian President Poroshenko to Vice-President Biden, he returned to Ukraine to serve as Special Advisor to Ukraine's Prosecutor General. Vitvitsky has written and lectured extensively on topics related to the rule of law and corruption reduction in both Ukraine and North America. He has long been active in Ukrainian American community life and holds a J.D. and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University.

**Victor Rud**
Victor Rud has practiced law for 40 years, and before the fall of the Soviet Union, represented political prisoners persecuted by the KGB. He also served as Special Counsel to a member of the US Delegation to the Madrid Review Conference on Security & Cooperation in Europe.
Rud has spoken both domestically and internationally on issues affecting U.S./Russia/Ukraine relations, most recently at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. His commentary and analysis have been published, among others, by Forbes, EUToday, Center for European Policy Analysis, and the Kyiv Post.
Rud is served as Chairman of the Ukrainian American Bar Association and currently chairs its Committee on Foreign Affairs. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College and his law degree from Duke University.

**Dr. Paul R. Williams**
Dr. Paul R. Williams holds the Rebecca I. Grazier Professorship in Law and International Relations at American University where he teaches in the School of International Service and at the Washington College of Law. Dr. Williams is also the co-founder of the Public International Law & Policy Group (PILPG).

As a world renowned peace negotiation lawyer, Dr. Williams has assisted over two dozen parties in major international peace negotiations and has advised numerous parties on the drafting and implementation of post-conflict constitutions. Several of Dr. Williams' *pro bono* government clients throughout the world joined together to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Dr. Williams has served as a Senior Associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, as well as an Attorney-Adviser for European and Canadian affairs at the U.S. Department of State, Office of the Legal Adviser. Dr. Williams is a sought-after international law and policy expert. Dr. Williams has authored six books on various topics concerning international law, and has published over three dozen scholarly articles on topics of international law and policy. More information about Dr. Williams can be found at www.drpaulrwilliams.com.

**Ambassador Sven Alkalaj**
Ambassador Sven Alkalaj is a Bosnian diplomat and currently serves as the Permanent Representative of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the United Nations.
During his diplomatic career, Ambassador Alkalaj served as Under Secretary-General and Executive Secretary at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) from 2012 to 2014. He served as his country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs in Sarajevo between 2007 and 2012 and served previously in Brussels as Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Ambassador to Belgium, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Luxembourg, from 2004 to 2007. Based in Washington, D.C. between 1994 and 2003, Ambassador Alkalaj also served as his country’s Ambassador to the Organization of American States from 2000 to 2003, and as Ambassador to the United States from 1994 to 2000.
Most recently, Ambassador Alkalaj served as Visiting Professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations in Switzerland between 2015 and 2019, as well as Assistant Professor at the University of Travnik in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2016 to 2017.
Ambassador Alkalaj holds a post-doctorate law degree from the University of Travnik in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a graduate degree in business administration from Harvard University, United States, and both a master’s degree in international relations and a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of Sarajevo.

MODERATOR

Milena Sterio, the Charles R. Emrick Jr. - Calfee Halter & Griswold Professor of Law at Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and Managing Director at PILPG is a leading expert on international law, international criminal law and human rights. Sterio is one of six permanent editors of the prestigious IntLawGrrls blog, and a frequent contributor to the blog focused on international law, policy and practice. In the spring of 2013, Sterio was selected as a Fulbright Scholar, spending the semester in Baku, Azerbaijan, at Baku State University. While in Baku, she had the opportunity to teach and conduct research on secession issues under international law related to the province of Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh. Serving as a maritime piracy law expert, she has participated in meetings of the United Nations Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia as well as in the work of the United Nations Global Counterterrorism Forum. Sterio has also assisted piracy prosecutions in Mauritius, Kenya and the Seychelles Islands. Sterio is a graduate of Cornell Law School and the University of Paris I, and was an associate in the New York City firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton before joining the ranks of academia full time. She has published seven books and numerous law review articles. Her latest book, “The Syrian Conflict’s Impact on International Law,” (co-authored with Paul Williams and Michael Scharf) was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.