Three years of courage: navigating Ukraine’s future and the road to peace

Rose Gottemoeller is the Steven C. Házy Lecturer at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and its Center for International Security and Cooperation. Before joining Stanford, Gottemoeller was the deputy secretary-general of NATO. Prior to NATO, she served for nearly five years as the under secretary for arms control and international security at the United States Department of State, advising the Secretary of State on arms control, nonproliferation and political-military affairs. While assistant secretary of state for arms control, verification and compliance, she was the chief US negotiator of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the Russian Federation.

The former president of Lithuania and European commissioner, Dalia Grybauskaitė currently serves as the Co-Chair of the United Nations High-Level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity (FACTI). Previously, she has chaired the Council of Women World Leaders and held several positions as a Lithuanian diplomat and politician, including as the country’s finance minister, as well as minister plenipotentiary at the Lithuanian embassy to the United States and at the Lithuanian Mission to the EU. Notably, Grybauskaitė played a key role in improving the relations between Lithuania and the EU as the deputy chief negotiator of Lithuania’s Association Agreement with the EU.

A human rights lawyer and defender, Oleksandra Matviichuk is the first-ever Ukrainian Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. She was awarded the esteemed prize for her work with the Center for Civil Liberties on democratic reform campaigns in Ukraine and the OSCE region. The organisation has been documenting war crimes committed by Russian troops since the initial invasion of Crimea, but also develops legislative changes, exercises public oversight over law enforcement agencies and the judiciary, and implements international solidarity programmes. Matviichuk coordinated the Euromaidan SOS civic initiative to provide legal assistance following the government’s crackdown on Euromaiden protesters, which has since monitored political persecution in the illegally occupied regions of Crimea and Donbas. Matviichuk has led similar campaigns, including #LetMyPeopleGo and #SaveOlegSentsov, to fight for the release of political prisoners detained by Russian authorities. Having authored reports for several United Nations bodies, the Council of Europe, the EU, the OSCE and the International Criminal Court, she received the Democracy Defender Award and is the country’s first female candidate to be nominated to the UN Committee against Torture.

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.