Ukraine War 1 Year On:
How bad is it and what happens next?
Tuesday, February 28, 2023
9:00-10:30 am PST
NSF Hybrid Event
In-Person at Reno-Elks
597 Kumle Lane, Reno, NV
Event 8:00-10:30 am PST
Breakfast served 8:00-9:00 am, Forum 9:00-10:30 am
Virtual on Zoom
Forum 9:00-10:30 am PST
Register in advance for this webinar:
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_VHozNqunR32WJSfYpm4_BA
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
Keynote Speaker:
Dmitry Gorenburg, PhD
Senior Research Scientist, CNA
Discussants:
Prof. Barbara Walker, PhD
Department of History, University of Nevada, Reno
John Woodworth
US Department of Defense (retired)
Charlotteville Committee on Foreign Relations
Hon. Susan R. Malone
NSF Board of Directors
Welcome NSF members and guests to our new format of hybrid meetings. We will be in person at the Reno Elks and on Zoom for those of you who are not in the area or opt to attend our forum events virtually. We expect to have audiovisual issues for Zoom worked out this week. For those joining us at Reno-Elks, we have shifted our events to a different day to avoid the Wednesday morning parking crunch, so you should have plenty of parking for this event. We have also moved to the Terrace Room at Elks, which should have better acoustics and screen visibility. Thank you to those of you who provided helpful feedback after our last meeting.
Program updates:
- Stay tuned – I am still working on arrangements with our speaker and discussants for a program on domestic extremism in late March or early April.
- NNSS Tour – Dates set for 1-3 May! Travel to Las Vegas on Mon 1st May, tour Nevada National Security Site on Tue 2nd May hosted by MSTS, Wed 3rd May visit the Atomic Testing Museum. Sign up link will be posted on our website shortly.
- Youth Security Forum -Scheduled for Tuesday 23rd May. Theme: “Bridging the Divide: Civil discourse around national security issues in times of national division.” We are looking for volunteers to help facilitate sessions. If you are interested email me at: [email protected]
About our February 28th forum…
“Russian forces have regained the initiative in Ukraine and have begun their next major offensive in Luhansk Oblast… Russian officials continue to propose measures to prepare Russia’s military industry for a protracted war in Ukraine while also likely setting further conditions for sanctions evasion.” (09Feb23, Institute for the Study of War, Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment)
As we near the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States our NATO allies, and much of the world has been both horrified by ongoing brutality of the Russian assault and inspired by the resilience of President Zelensky, Ukrainian warfighters, and most notably, the Ukrainian people. With the onset of warmer weather and more conscripts, Russian and Ukraine are both girding for intense fighting in the Spring offensives.
The toll on life, livelihoods, infrastructure, and the economy of Ukraine has been staggering. Prospects for peace are dim. The United States and our NATO allies still stand united in opposition to Russian aggression…for now. China has stayed out of the fight…mostly. Iran has joined it, supplying increasingly more deadly drones. Poland and the Baltics are bracing to be next in Putin’s crosshairs. So…what happens next?
To address this vexing question, we invited our esteemed keynote speaker from a year ago, Dr. Dmitry Gorenburg, to return to NSF to help us make sense of the last year and help us understand what is likely happen in the second year of the Ukraine War. Dr. Gorenburg is a Senior Research Scientist at CNA (formerly known as the Center for Naval Analysis), with decades of experience analyzing the former Soviet Union and Russian leadership, military strategies, and foreign and domestic policies. On the eve of the Russian invasion in 2022, he shared his insight on how the current situation arose and how long the war may go on.
Dr. Gorenburg’s presentation to us on February 28th, follows on the heels of his return from a European conference about the war with allies and policy makers. He promises to share the latest thinking on imminent offensives by both Ukraine and Russia, prospects for peace, and the ongoing role for the US and Europe in countering Russian aggression. As one of the leading experts on the subject, Dr. Gorenburg shared his perspective in the January 2023 issue of Foreign Affairs, on the prospect of Ukrainian territorial concessions for peace.
“I do not think that any formal concessions of territory captured since February 24, 2022, are likely. There is some chance of an agreement that recognizes at least de facto Russian territorial control of Crimea. Donetsk or Luhansk could go either way, depending on the situation on the ground. That said, I do not necessarily think that Ukraine will be able to regain all the territory it lost in 2022, merely that it will not acquiesce to this loss in a settlement. There is a possibility of an armistice without a settlement, à la Korea, but it will be some years before that happens.” (Dmitry Gorenburg, 24 Jan 2023, Foreign Affairs, Ask the Experts: Will Ukraine Wind Up Making Territorial Concessions to Russia?)
Joining Dr. Gorenburg, will be an esteemed panel of discussants who will provide additional perspectives on the war. Barbara Walker, Professor of Russian history at University Nevada, Reno, will join us again and share insight on the sociocultural, economic, and political history that intertwines Russian and Ukraine and what this portends for the future. John Woodworth, member of the Charlottesville Committee on Foreign Relations and former senior official in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, will comment on the conditions and prospects for cessation of hostilities and negotiations, and Ukraine and NATO deliberations on end-of-war outcomes. Susan Malone, NSF Board member and former advisor to the Bosnian War Crimes Tribunal, will shed light on the process for prosecuting Russian war crimes.
To accommodate the breadth and depth of this discussion and to allow time for your questions, we have extended our forum time to 90 minutes. Our program will begin at 9:00 and end at 10:30am PST.
We expect this combination of expert insight and lively dialogue will help you gain more understanding about the state and future of the Ukraine War and stimulate you to ask many questions.
Please join us for a very important and timely program and be ready to share your thoughts and questions with our speakers.
Dmitry Gorenburg, PhD, Dmitry Gorenburg is an expert on security issues in the former Soviet Union, Russian military reform, Russian foreign policy, and ethnic politics and identity. His recent research topics include decision-making processes in the senior Russian leadership, Russian naval strategy in the Pacific and the Black Sea, and Russian maritime defense doctrine. Gorenburg is author of “Nationalism for the Masses: Minority Ethnic Mobilization in the Russian Federation” (Cambridge University Press, 2003), and has been published in journals such as World Politics and Post-Soviet Affairs. In addition to his role at CNA, he currently serves as editor of Problems of Post-Communism and is an Associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. From 2009 to 2016, he edited the journal Russian Politics and Law. Gorenburg previously served as Executive Director of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES). He received a B.A. in international relations from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University. He blogs on issues related to the Russian military at Russian Military Reform. He is a native Russian speaker.
Barbara Walker, PhD, has published on a broad range of historical topics in the area of Russian and Soviet intellectual life and its economic foundations, social organization and culture. More recently, she has branched out to explore the nature of expertise, specifically “information expertise,” in her current book project, A War of Experts: Soviet and American knowledge networks in Cold War competition and collaboration. Her book will present the intertwined stories of a variety of lively and committed “information experts” in the Cold War United States and Soviet Union, including early electronic computer designers, U.S.-Soviet research exchange scholars, journalists and Soviet dissidents. Information professionals in the area of intelligence make their appearance too. The book focuses on the efforts of these ambitious, often passionate “experts” to multiply their numbers and to expand the influence of their expertise in this period. To accomplish these goals, they built on networks and traditions reaching back into the 19th century, in which lay the origins of the professionalization of expertise in many areas. Walker’s research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Thomas Watson Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the International Research Exchange (IREX), American Councils, the Hoover Institution at Stanford, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the University of Nevada, Reno, Core Humanities Program and others.
John Woodworth’s career in international affairs and national security policy has involved work in government, education, consulting, and civic organizations. He held various senior positions in government, including Ambassador and Deputy Negotiator for INF in the US-Soviet Nuclear and Space Talks, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Policy, Secretary of Defense Representative on the US Delegations to the UN Committee on Disarmament and the CSCE Stockholm Conference on Security in Europe, and principal nuclear policy advisor at the US Mission to NATO. Following government service, he has provided consulting services in international affairs and national security policy to a number of government agency and private sector clients. He came to Charlottesville in 1994 as a Senior Faculty Member and Special Advisor for International Studies at the Federal Executive Institute, where he developed and taught courses on global trends, coordinated leadership programs, and facilitated professional development teams. Among activities in civic organizations, he was Chairman and Director for Programs of the Charlottesville Committee on Foreign Relations, served on the International Council of the University of Virginia, and was a member of the Community Advisory Committee of the International Rescue Committee in Charlottesville. He is an Officer of Elections and Precinct Chief in Albemarle County, and has served on numerous overseas election observation missions for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, including in Macedonia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Belarus, Montenegro, and Moldova. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the National Defense University, and a Fellow in Public Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University. He received his BA degree from Duke University in history, and a Master of Science in Foreign Service degree from Georgetown University.
Susan Malone has over 40 years of extensive and documented success in the public, private, government, combating terrorism/anti-terrorism assistance and Human Rights, Human Trafficking, NGO sector; extensive experience in the federal criminal investigative arena with a focus on Justice Programs, Rule of Law, Human Rights, Inspector General operations, international banking and money laundering, conflict of interest, procurement fraud, bribery, and corruption investigations. Advisor to the Iraq Minister of Interior and senior National Police. Managed and coordinated major international United Nations and Civil Affairs programs in Asia, Africa, South and Central America and the Middle East. Team Leader, Afghanistan, HTA program. Appointed to the senior United Nations Civil Service, War Crimes Tribunal, The Hague, the Netherlands. BA degree, California State University, Fullerton, CA; MA degree, Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA; MA degree, U.S. Army War College; Graduate, FBI Academy; Graduate, US Department of State-Department of Defense Interdepartmental Studies Program. Appointed to numerous commissions and advisory boards including, Member, President’s Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism; Member, Secretary of Defense Advisory Board Evaluating the Investigative Capabilities of the Department of Defense; Member, Marine Corps Reserve Policy Board; past national president, Marine Corps Reserve Officers Association; member, Northern Nevada State Veterans Home Independent Advisory Board. USMC Officer – Colonel. Extensive experience in military/political affairs, counter-intelligence and security matters.
The National Security Forum is a non-partisan, educational, nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering civil discourse and informed discussion about timely and important national security topics. We bring expert speakers from around the U.S. to talk about national and international security, domestic and foreign terrorism, economic and financial threats, the safety of our food and water supply, energy policy, electrical grid stability, and a variety of other topics that affect all Americans. The National Security Forum partners with the Washoe County School District to host an annual Youth Security Forum to encourage future generations national security leaders.
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