Events Detail

       Baran, Shamshur, Sterling, Ekimoff, and Stein

recently held a conference on:

THE KYIV ENERGY SUMMIT:
Prospects and Implications for the US, the EU, and Eurasia

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Featured an address by:

H.E. OLEH SHAMSHUR

Ambassador of Ukraine to the United States of America

and remarks by:

ADAM STERLING

National Security Council

(remarks off the record)

LANA EKIMOFF

Department of Energy

DAN STEIN

US Trade and Development Agency

Hosted by:

ZEYNO BARAN

Center for Eurasian Policy

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

3:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

This past May, the presidents of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Poland, and the three Baltic States—together with key officials from Washington, Brussels, and key Eurasian capitals from Astana to Ashgabat—met in Kyiv and agreed on the Transit Space Concept (TSC). Within this framework, which will promote alternative energy transport routes from Eurasian producing countries to European markets, producer, transit, and consumer states are all predicted to benefit.

Yet, while the summit represented a significant step forward to cooperation among a set of diverse countries with potentially diverging interests, perhaps even more significant is the role of the absent elephant in the room: Russia. A series of increasingly assertive statements from the Russian foreign ministry regarding Ukrainian sovereignty (especially over the Crimean Black Sea port of Sevastopol), together with overt threats of price increases for gas and of "responses" to Ukraine's signing of a NATO Membership Action Plan (slated for later this year) has led many to question the viability of the TSC—and of Ukraine as its central link.

Oleh Shamshur, current Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, presented an informed Ukranian perspective on the Summit and on Eurasian energy. A former deputy foreign minister and head of the Ukrainian MFA's European Union Department, Shamshur has considerable expertise in Ukraine's ties with both Washington and Brussels—as well as in the economic issues.

Also speaking were Adam Sterling of the National Security Council, whose remarks were off the record; Lana Ekimoff of the Department of Energy; and Dan Stein of the Trade and Development Agency.

This on the record meeting took place at Hudson Institute, located at 1015 15th St, NW, 6th Floor, Washington, DC. For more information, please contact Onur Sazak at onur@hudson.org  or call  (202) 974 6445.