Security is trust
Trust does not tolerate hesitations rooted in uncertainty. The global security system cracks under its own incapacity to call things by their proper names. Inability to face the reality and to call wars – wars, and the aggressors – aggressors, undermines trust of people towards international security institutions. Without this trust security agreements become meaningless, alliances depreciate, and guarantees do not have power.
Without trust the legitimacy of the international security order will melt away. Disintegration processes within the EU, partiality charges against the OSCE, chronic deep concern of the UN are all consequences of the institutional legitimacy inflation.
It is inevitable that a new model of international security will replace the current one, which was supposed to protect people from the specter of the world war. The resilience or fragility of this new model is subject to the level of trust it will enjoy by people who remain trapped by uncertainty and fear.
Lviv Security Forum
is a platform for discussion in pursuit of finding the answer to question what the new international security order wood look like.
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Mary O ‘Hagan: Ukraine is united
One of the reasons why public opinion is so important is because there are a…
More Info All NewsOne of the reasons why public opinion is so important is because there are a few areas of human experience where people are more important than in the case of conflict and security issues. In Ukrainian context, which is, as we have seen, a very low-trust environment, where disinformation is rife, where there may be some big gaps between the assumptions that people inside and outside the country make about things and what the reality is, where the awareness of some issues may be low both inside and outside the country, the discussion of what Ukrainian people think is very important.
The things I would share from our own research are really straightforward. I’ve believed for a long time that of all the many miscalculations that Russia made in initiating this conflict, underestimating Ukrainian identity and Ukrainian unity was the biggest. I’ll share a few results using different methodologies that demonstrate why I say that.
In May of 2015 we used a cutting-edge tool called «implicit-association test» to look whether the respondents had any native preference for Ukraine or Russia. We did it in different regions of the country. We found that Ukraine is implicitly preferred to Russia irrespective of where you do this test, what age or gender you are, what language you speak at home or how do you vote. We found that there was no statistical difference at all in the responses of the people who had voted for the parties that formed the coalition after the 2014 election and those who had voted for the opposition parties. There was no statistical difference in the result on that test between these two groups of people.
We’ve also been using more traditional methods. In a face-to-face survey, 84% of Ukrainians, majorities of every region we’ve looked at, say that it’s important to them that Ukraine becomes a fully functioning democracy. We’ve asked people what they think democracy means. The magnetic pull of Russia in the people’s minds in terms of the lives they want to lead, is weak. The number of those who think that Russia’s influence in Ukraine is positive in our surveys since May 2015 is in the 3 to 5% range.
Between 3 and 5% of Ukrainians believe that Russia’s influence in Ukraine is positive. Finally, we get 85 % in July this year, which is up from 44% in May 2015, who say that they would refuse to give up Ukraine’s right to determine its own future even if it meant an end to the war. They would refuse to give up Ukraine’s right to determine its own future even if it meant an end to the war tomorrow. When I say these things, it may seem like there is some dissonance between Mariana’s presentation and the data we’ve done. I don’t think it’s true. I think that the important thing that Mariana’s shared with us is how different some of the attitudes in the unoccupied portions of Donbas compared with the rest of Ukraine are.
Ukraine is united in a way that Russia is very reluctant to recognize, and many people, especially outside of Ukraine, don’t understand. I think that there are many ways in which Ukrainian society can be divided, whether it is political dynamics within the country, or whether it is hostile actions by aggressor, but I think that the goal of remaining united and preserving the sense of an identity is the security issue for Ukraine. And I hope very much that this is something we can all share. When we see that the Ukrainians are being divided, that it is actively seen as a threat to Ukraine, no matter where the direction of that comes from, because in these days you don’t always know where it is coming from.

Mark Voyger: Battle for Ukeraine is battle for Europe
I was very happy to be invited here. Ukraine, and especially the beautiful city of…
More Info All NewsI was very happy to be invited here. Ukraine, and especially the beautiful city of Lviv, is always in our heart. Every time we come to Ukraine, we’re reminded that Ukraine is Europe, Lviv is Europe. The battle for Ukraine is the battle for the future of Europe.
But I want to touch upon the issue of what we all call Russian hybrid warfare, how some of the techniques that Russia uses in the process of waging the hybrid warfare are manifested in the report. The most important one and probably the least noticed and analyzed one is the so-called «lawfare», legal warfare — the way Russia uses international and domestic law as a weapon, the weaponization of the law. Then I’ll switch from negative developments to good news, what I’ve been calling since the beginning of the conflict not the «nation bulding», but «nation forging», continues. The way a nation is forged in the fires of conflict and war, as unfortunate and tragic as it is, is probably the most important outcome of the battle for Ukraine.
My colleagues spoke in detail about hybrid warfare. We know the history of this phenomenon. Unfortunately, Ukraine has been a testing ground for Russian hybrid warfare or asymmetric warfare not for the course of only three or four years, not only several decades, but effectively for three or four centuries. It dates back to Peter the Great and Empress Catherine.
Unfortunately, in the 21st century Ukraine became the testing ground of the modern application of what some call the Gerasimov doctrine or modern Russian asymmetric non-linear warfare.
Even more disturbingly, the lessons of this warfare, everything that is tested here, everything that Russia experiments with, will be applied then in different theaters, such as Syria. If Russia stops here, this will be a blow to their expansions elsewhere.
What can we use from the report? Well, unfortunately, there is still a great division within the Ukrainian society. Just a prefatory look upon the geographical distribution and you immediately see that there are definitely differences in opinion among these various regions.
Lawfare. I was quite disturbed to see the poll stating that the trust in the Verkhovna Rada is so low. It is all about democracy. It is a battle for Ukraine, a battle for Europe. It is a battle not only for Europe in a geographical sense, but in notional sense, in a sense of values. If a nation doesn’t trust its elected representative, then Russia doesn’t have to do that much effectively. And it is not the business of the West or Europe to implement change. We can assist you; there have been a lot of efforts in this regard. But this is ultimately up to Ukrainian people and Ukrainian legislators that have to re-forge that bond. This is part of the legal effort. I would hate to see Russia winning on that account.
Another point is the recognition of who the aggressor is and who is the enemy. How come that 99% of the Ukrainians don’t say that Russia is the enemy? We’re at the fourth year of the war. This legal ambiguity is not only an academic debate, not only a boring forcing of words, it is actually critical, it is a weapon of itself. There has to be a coherent effort on that account.
Now, moving on to some of the good news. I saw that the support for the Ukrainian army is really high. That makes me happy. General Hodges always gives the example of the American War of Independence. Congress in Philadelphia in 1776 issued the Declaration of Independence, but then it was supported by the Continental Army. If you followed the American example, you’d have the national legislators hand in hand with the national army working to achieve a national goal. In that regard the support for the army is commendable, but it needs to be coupled with the support for the Ukrainian parliament.
We cannot do that much on account of parliamentary support, but the US, Canada, Britain and Baltic States are doing a lot in supporting your army. This is part of the nation-forging project that has been going on.
I think that four years ago Putin and Russian regime miscalculated in many ways. What brought terrible suffering and tragic events in Ukraine, but ultimately, they pushed Ukraine towards the West, they pushed Ukraine towards Europe better than anyone could have done.

Serhiy Harmash: Only force wins wars
The cause of this conflict, the reason it still drags on is that we do…
More Info All NewsThe cause of this conflict, the reason it still drags on is that we do not admit the reality, we cannot still take war as a war. And besides, this problem has made Ukraine an outcast in the international space. Even sanctions that were supposed to help Ukraine win this war, have made Ukraine a problem to the world. But there is no Ukrainian problem, there is a Russian problem, which is much wider than Ukraine, than Abkhazia, than Georgia. So it’s not Ukraine that we’ve got to to something about now, that we need to rescue, the world has got to rescue itself and solve Russian problems. And here we come to the problem of inability to recognize the reality.
I, as a person who fled from war in Donetsk, who have left home there, to which I have no access, whose father’s grave is there which I cannot attend, whose sister is there, whom I cannot even call on the phone for fear of putting her under the risk, might be emotional in my assessments of these events, but personally I don’t see any political and diplomatic way of solving the conflict. Despite the fact that it is reiterated permanently, and such a statement has become a stop sign for Ukraine, because everybody here is saying that there is no other concept of solving this problem, but the diplomacy. Nothing but diplomacy. And I can’t see the possibility of such a solution at all, because, first of all, diplomacy is based on logic and certain rules. Russia has no logic, nor are there any rules. Recent events in Luhansk, when they «changed the government» so to say, showed us that there is neither a logic, nor any rules. At once a «Constitution» was re-tailored for one particular person. And it is all about Russia.
Being a part of western civilization, of the western world, we, the Ukrainians, also have this weakness — we create these stop signs for ourselves, and then say that if we do this, then Putin will do that. No one can tell what Putin will really do, he himself may not know, he is just a human like us. Here we have just to face the truth and name things as they are — there’s no other way of solving this problem, except for using force. It should not necessarily be the military force, it can be economical force, a force of principles, but it has to be a force. Today’s sanctions of course may be good, but they are not effective, because Russia is still in Donbass, Russia is still in Crimea.
Hence, Putin is using the same ideological and economical weapon against the West which the West applies against him. And it will continue to be this way, unless we stop denying the facts and reality. As a deeply traumatized person, as I have fled the war in Donbass, I may allow myself to say that why the West is treating the Budapest Memorandum the way it does is still a mystery to me. Because, when we hear that when signing this memorandum the West really meant something else, not the security guarantees, that this is just a translation fault, and we just got it all wrong, we get it very well that you are lying. And you understand it too. Everybody understands that.
What it may lead to? Let’s set aside Ukraine, but after about 20 years Russia will crumble down, and what will you do with that nuclear weapon, which is there and which will be in possession of different state subjects, so to say? Who will give away their weapon for flimsy security guarantees? The same problem with North Korea may blow up much sooner. So, we just need to be brave to face the reality and respond to it adequately.

