Where will the conference take place?

The conference will be held in the city of Lviv, UKR.

What is the primary focus of the conference?

The conference, titled "Ukraine in the Conditions of Transformation of the International Security System 2026," focuses on the evolving international security system and UKR's role within it.

What is the format of the conference?

The conference is an international scientific conference.

Україна в умовах трансформації міжнародної системи безпеки 2026 – ХII Міжнародна наукова конференція

Mar 27, 2026Lviv, UkraineVirtual

Registration open

The XII International Scientific Conference, "Ukraine in the Conditions of Transformation of the International Security System 2026," convenes in Lviv, Ukraine. This event focuses on the evolving international security landscape and Ukraine's pivotal role within it, bringing together scholars and practitioners to analyze contemporary challenges and future directions. The conference is a key forum for discussing the profound shifts impacting global stability and regional dynamics.

Committees & topics

Topics
Formation of Regional Security Systems and a New World Order · The Russo-Ukrainian War and Its Implications for International Security · Strengthening the Eastern Flank of the EU and NATO: Security Policy in an Era of Decolonisation · Crisis Resolution and Conflict Settlement · Strategy for the Post-War Reconstruction of Ukraine · Economic and Energy Security of the State · Strategic Communications and Analytical Activities · Theoretical and Applied Problems of Interstate Relations in Central and Eastern Europe

Why it matters

This conference is particularly significant as it addresses the ongoing transformation of the international security system, a process profoundly influenced by geopolitical shifts and emerging threats. The focus on UKR highlights its critical position as a frontline state in these transformations, making the discussions highly relevant to understanding broader European and global security architectures. The event provides a platform for in-depth analysis of complex issues, from regional conflicts to the redefinition of international norms.

The discussions at this conference will contribute to a deeper understanding of how states and international organizations are adapting to new security paradigms. It offers an opportunity to explore innovative approaches to conflict resolution, defense cooperation, and the strengthening of international law. For policymakers and academics alike, the insights generated here can inform strategic planning and diplomatic initiatives aimed at fostering a more stable and secure international environment.

How to prepare

To effectively engage with the themes of this conference, participants should undertake a thorough review of current geopolitical trends and their impact on international security. A strong understanding of the historical context of security challenges in Eastern Europe and the broader international system is essential. Consider employing a Dynamic Analysis approach to anticipate potential shifts in security paradigms.

Participants should also prepare by identifying key stakeholders in international security, utilizing a Stakeholder Mapping Workshop to understand their interests and influence. This includes not only state actors but also international organizations and non-state entities. Understanding the various perspectives will allow for more nuanced contributions to the discussions. Additionally, reviewing Engagement Strategies will be beneficial for fostering productive dialogue and collaboration among diverse participants.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 4 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Ukraine

A central actor in the transformation of the international security system, advocating for robust international support and collective security mechanisms.

Role in topic

As the host nation, UKR is at the epicenter of many discussions concerning international security transformations, particularly regarding regional conflicts and the future of European security. Its experiences directly inform the urgency and direction of the conference's themes.

United States

A key global security guarantor, emphasizing alliances and strategic deterrence in response to evolving threats.

Role in topic

The USA plays a significant role in shaping the international security system through its military capabilities, diplomatic efforts, and network of alliances. Its perspective on global stability and regional conflicts is crucial for understanding the broader context of the conference.

Russia

A major power challenging existing security architectures and advocating for a multipolar world order.

Role in topic

RUS is a critical actor whose actions and foreign policy significantly influence the current transformations in the international security system, particularly in Eastern Europe. Its strategic objectives and military posture are central to many discussions at the conference.

Germany

A leading European power promoting multilateralism and diplomatic solutions to security challenges.

Role in topic

DEU's economic and political influence within Europe makes its perspective on international security transformations highly relevant. Its commitment to multilateral institutions and diplomatic engagement offers a key viewpoint on resolving complex security issues.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Formation of Regional Security Systems and a New World Order

The post-Cold War unipolar moment has given way to a contested multipolar order in which regional security architectures are reasserting themselves. NATO's eastward enlargement, the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, AUKUS, and the revitalised Quad all reflect competing visions of how security should be organised below the global level. The 1994 Budapest Memorandum and the OSCE-based Helsinki order, once treated as foundational, have been hollowed out by Russia's revisionism since 2008 and especially after 2014 and 2022. The core debate concerns whether the emerging world order will be anchored in rules-based multilateralism, in competing spheres of influence, or in overlapping regional blocs with their own norms. Middle powers — Turkey, India, Brazil, the Gulf states — increasingly hedge between Washington and Beijing, while the Global South demands reform of UN Security Council representation. For Ukraine and its neighbours, the practical question is which regional framework can credibly deter aggression and integrate frontline states pending or in lieu of full NATO and EU membership.

Key players

The Russo-Ukrainian War and Its Implications for International Security

Russia's war against Ukraine began with the illegal annexation of Crimea and the instigation of conflict in Donbas in 2014, and escalated into a full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022. It is the largest interstate war in Europe since 1945, has displaced over ten million Ukrainians, and has triggered the most extensive Western sanctions regime in modern history. The war has demonstrated the failure of the Budapest Memorandum's security assurances and exposed gaps in the UN Charter's enforcement against a permanent Security Council member. The conflict's consequences extend well beyond Eastern Europe: global food and energy markets have been disrupted, nuclear rhetoric has resurfaced, and deepening Russia–DPRK and Russia–Iran cooperation has linked the European and Indo-Pacific theatres. NATO has enlarged to include Finland and Sweden, while debates continue over long-range strike permissions, frozen Russian assets, and the contours of any eventual settlement. Today the front line is largely static but attritional, and the central question for the international community is how to combine military support, sanctions, and diplomacy to secure a just peace consistent with Ukraine's territorial integrity.

Key players

Strengthening the Eastern Flank of the EU and NATO: Security Policy in an Era of Decolonisation

Since 2014, and decisively after 2022, NATO and the EU have rebuilt their eastern flank from a tripwire posture into a forward-defence architecture. The 2022 Madrid and 2023 Vilnius summits scaled up the enhanced Forward Presence into multinational brigades in the Baltic states and Poland, established new battlegroups in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia, and endorsed regional defence plans for the first time since the Cold War. The EU has matched this with the European Peace Facility, joint munitions procurement, and PESCO military mobility projects. This hard-security shift is accompanied by what frontline states increasingly frame as a 'decolonisation' agenda — the dismantling of residual Russian imperial influence in language, energy, infrastructure, religion and historical memory across Central and Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia. The challenges are to sustain defence spending above 2% of GDP, to industrialise European munitions production, to integrate Ukraine and Moldova into the European security space, and to manage internal political divergences, including over Hungary's posture and uncertainty about future US commitments.

Key players

Crisis Resolution and Conflict Settlement

The UN Charter's collective security system, built around Chapter VI peaceful settlement and Chapter VII enforcement, is under severe strain. Permanent-member vetoes have paralysed the Security Council on Ukraine, Syria and Gaza, while peacekeeping missions have been withdrawn or downsized in Mali, the DRC and Sudan. Mediation increasingly happens through ad hoc formats — the Jeddah talks, the Doha process, Astana, the African Union's Tigray mediation, and Ukraine's Peace Formula summits — rather than through UN-led tracks. Contemporary conflicts are also harder to settle: they are internationalised, involve non-state armed groups and private military companies, and unfold alongside information and cyber operations. Debates focus on revitalising preventive diplomacy under the Secretary-General's New Agenda for Peace, reforming the veto via the Liechtenstein initiative, strengthening the Peacebuilding Commission, and ensuring accountability through the ICC, ICJ and hybrid tribunals. The settlement of the Russo-Ukrainian war is widely seen as a test case for whether any future order can credibly enforce territorial integrity.

Key players

Strategy for the Post-War Reconstruction of Ukraine

The World Bank, European Commission, UN and Ukrainian government jointly estimate Ukraine's recovery and reconstruction needs at well over USD 480 billion across a decade, covering housing, energy, transport, demining, healthcare and public administration. The framework has been shaped through the Lugano Principles (2022) and successive Ukraine Recovery Conferences in Berlin, London and Rome, alongside the EU's Ukraine Facility (EUR 50 billion for 2024–2027) and G7 commitments backed in part by extraordinary revenues from immobilised Russian sovereign assets. Reconstruction is inseparable from EU accession, which opened formally in 2024 and requires deep reforms in rule of law, anti-corruption, decentralisation and public procurement. Strategic debates concern sequencing (recovery during ongoing war versus after a settlement), the balance between grants and loans, the role of the private sector and diaspora, war-risk insurance, and a credible reparations mechanism — including the Register of Damage established in The Hague in 2023. The overarching question is how to convert reconstruction into a transformation that locks Ukraine into Euro-Atlantic structures.

Key players

Economic and Energy Security of the State

The 2022 energy shock — driven by Russia's weaponisation of gas supplies and attacks on Ukraine's power system — forced Europe to dismantle decades of dependence on Russian hydrocarbons in under two years. The EU's REPowerEU plan accelerated LNG imports, renewables deployment, and grid interconnection; the G7+ price cap on Russian oil and successive sanctions packages reshaped global energy flows. Ukraine itself has lost roughly half its pre-war generation capacity to systematic Russian strikes on thermal and hydropower plants, making decentralised generation and air defence of energy infrastructure existential priorities. Economic security has likewise broadened beyond macro-stability to encompass supply-chain resilience, critical raw materials, food security, financial sanctions enforcement, and protection against economic coercion. The EU's Economic Security Strategy, the US CHIPS and Inflation Reduction Acts, and parallel industrial policies in Asia signal a durable shift toward 'de-risking' and friend-shoring. For Ukraine and frontline states, the agenda is to integrate into European energy and industrial markets, rebuild a distributed and low-carbon power system, and shield budgets from war-driven volatility.

Key players

Strategic Communications and Analytical Activities

Strategic communications have moved from a supporting function to a central instrument of statecraft. Russia's full-scale invasion was preceded and accompanied by sustained disinformation campaigns, exposed by initiatives such as the EU's EUvsDisinfo, NATO StratCom COE in Riga, and the US Global Engagement Center. Generative AI, deepfakes, and coordinated inauthentic behaviour on social platforms have lowered the cost of large-scale influence operations, while attacks on independent journalism and the capture of domestic media in several states have narrowed the information space. The analytical dimension — open-source intelligence, sanctions tracking, battlefield monitoring, and policy forecasting — has been transformed by think tanks, OSINT communities and academic centres working in near-real time. Policy debates focus on the EU Digital Services Act, the forthcoming AI Act, platform accountability, protection of elections, and building societal resilience through media literacy. For Ukraine, strategic communications are simultaneously a wartime necessity, a tool for sustaining international support, and a precondition for democratic reconstruction.

Key players

Theoretical and Applied Problems of Interstate Relations in Central and Eastern Europe

Central and Eastern Europe has been reshaped by three decades of post-communist transformation, EU and NATO enlargement, and now the gravitational pull of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Sub-regional formats — the Visegrád Group, the Three Seas Initiative, the Bucharest Nine, the Lublin Triangle, and the Nordic-Baltic Eight — have multiplied as states seek complementary forums to Brussels and Washington. Cross-border infrastructure (Via Carpathia, Rail Baltica, LNG terminals in Świnoujście and Klaipėda) is steadily reorienting the region on a north–south axis. Applied tensions persist: disputes over historical memory, minority rights, and grain trade with Ukraine; divergences over Russia policy, illustrated by Hungary's and Slovakia's positions; and the strain of hosting millions of Ukrainian refugees. Theoretical debates revisit concepts of 'Intermarium', 'Three Seas' and 'Central Europe' as analytic categories, and ask whether the region constitutes a coherent security community or remains a contested borderland. The integration of Ukraine and Moldova into EU structures is poised to redefine the region's centre of gravity.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for Україна в умовах трансформації міжнародної системи безпеки 2026 – ХII Міжнародна наукова конференція.

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Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

The Power-Interest Grid

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Conflict Resolution

Policy Brief Writing

Media & Press Relations

Stakeholder Mapping

Ukraine March 2026

By committee

Frequently asked questions

Україна в умовах трансформації міжнародної системи безпеки 2026 – ХII Міжнародна наукова конференція

Mar 27, 2026Lviv, UkraineVirtual

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
Formation of Regional Security Systems and a New World Order · The Russo-Ukrainian War and Its Implications for International Security · Strengthening the Eastern Flank of the EU and NATO: Security Policy in an Era of Decolonisation · Crisis Resolution and Conflict Settlement · Strategy for the Post-War Reconstruction of Ukraine · Economic and Energy Security of the State · Strategic Communications and Analytical Activities · Theoretical and Applied Problems of Interstate Relations in Central and Eastern Europe

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 4 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Ukraine

A central actor in the transformation of the international security system, advocating for robust international support and collective security mechanisms.

Role in topic

United States

A key global security guarantor, emphasizing alliances and strategic deterrence in response to evolving threats.

Role in topic

Russia

A major power challenging existing security architectures and advocating for a multipolar world order.

Role in topic

Germany

A leading European power promoting multilateralism and diplomatic solutions to security challenges.

Role in topic

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Formation of Regional Security Systems and a New World Order

Key players

The Russo-Ukrainian War and Its Implications for International Security

Key players

Strengthening the Eastern Flank of the EU and NATO: Security Policy in an Era of Decolonisation

Key players

Crisis Resolution and Conflict Settlement

Key players

Strategy for the Post-War Reconstruction of Ukraine

Key players

Economic and Energy Security of the State

Key players

Strategic Communications and Analytical Activities

Key players

Theoretical and Applied Problems of Interstate Relations in Central and Eastern Europe

Key players

Resources

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Hilton-Becerra Race Sets Up High-Stakes Clash

US Job Openings at 6.7M

Trump's Economic Reset

Trump's Economic Approval Hits 30% Amid Iran

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

The Power-Interest Grid

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Conflict Resolution

Policy Brief Writing

Media & Press Relations

Stakeholder Mapping

Ukraine March 2026

By committee

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

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Frequently asked questions

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

Related conferences

X International Scientific and Practical Conference “International and National Security: Theoretical and Applied Aspects”

13th All-Ukrainian Scientific and Practical Conference «Current Problems of International Relations and Foreign Policy»

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International Forum "Architecture of Security"

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Frequently asked questions