The Black Sea and European security

Alina Frolova is a strategic communications expert and civic activist, with over 20 years of experience in the creation and development of communication projects for both public agencies and Ukrainian multinational companies. She currently leads the Centre for Defence Strategies in their effort to protect Ukraine from military and hybrid threats. Frolova is also the Founder of StratcomUA, an NGO established with the goal of supporting the government of Ukraine’s capacity-building in the field of strategic communications. Formerly, she served as the Ukrainian deputy minister of defence and as an advisor to the Ministries of Defence and of Information Policy.

Prior to joining Friends of Europe, Dharmendra Kanani was director of policy at the European Foundation Centre (EFC). He was the England director at the Big Lottery Fund, the largest independent funder in the UK and fourth largest in the world. Dharmendra has held senior positions in the public and voluntary sectors and advisor to numerous ministerial policy initiatives across the UK.

Retiring from NATO in September 2018 after 38 years at the organisation, Jamie Shea has occupied a number of senior positions at NATO across a wide range of areas, including external relations, press and media, and policy planning. As NATO’s spokesperson, he was the face of the alliance during the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts. He later worked as the director of policy planning in the private office of former secretary general Rasmussen during the preparation of NATO’s 2010 Strategic Concept. Shea is also a regular lecturer and conference speaker on NATO and European security affairs.

Paul Taylor is a Senior Fellow at Friends of Europe and the author of the think tank’s European Defence Cooperation report series. He previously spent four decades working for Reuters as a foreign correspondent in Paris, Tehran, Bonn and Brussels, as bureau chief in Israel/Palestine, Berlin and Brussels, as chief correspondent in France, as diplomatic editor in London, and finally as European affairs editor. Taylor’s assignments have included covering the Iranian revolution, the Cold War Euromissile crisis, the 1991 Gulf War, German reunification, the Maastricht summit, France in the 1990s, EU enlargement, the Eurozone crisis and the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt.

Viola von Cramon-Taubadel is a Member of the European Parliament for the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance, who currently serves on the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Special Committee on Foreign Interference in all Democratic Processes in the European Union, including Disinformation. Additionally, Cramon-Taubadel is the First Vice-Chair of the EP’s Delegation to the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Association Committee, as well as a Member of the EU Delegation to Serbia and the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly. Prior to her EP mandate, she represented Lower Saxony in the German federal parliament, where she was the spokesperson for EU foreign relations and sports policy.

Igor Yurgens has extensive experience within the trade union movement of the USSR and the Russian Federation. He currently sits on the management board of the Institute for Contemporary Development, a Moscow-based think tank dedicated to a modern Russia, as well as the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. Additionally, Yurgens serves as President of the All-Russian Insurance Association and of the Russian Association of Motor Insurers. He is also a member of the Russian Council on International Affairs, the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and the Advisory Board of the Centre for European Reform (CER). The Honorary Consul General of Monaco in Moscow, Yurgens also teaches at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations and has previously worked at the UNESCO Directorate for External Relations and Cooperation.