Video – War in Ukraine: Possibilities for a Peace Settlement

By | October 1, 2022

Webinar: October 5, 2022

1:00 pm – 2:00 pm ET

As the current phase of intense fighting in Ukraine stretches beyond six months, news reports and analyses focus on key elements of the war – shifting battle fronts, ground gained and lost, weapons promised and shipped, the still mounting tragedies of death, displacement, and physical destruction, and the resulting economic and food insecurities that extend well beyond the borders of Ukraine. Another feature of what has become this grinding war of attrition has received much less attention – namely, the sidelining of the diplomacy that will inevitably be central to silencing the guns and bringing the devastating hyper-violence of this conflict to an end.

On October 5, the Group of 78 will host a webinar to explore diplomatic approaches to ending the fighting and to addressing the conflicts at the core of the fighting. Guest speaker Ernie Regehr will draw on insights from his decades of work on peacebuilding including his Resolving Conflict: Why peace cannot be won on the battlefield (2015) to explore pathways to a sustainable and just peace between Russia and Ukraine.

Moderator:

John Foster, petroleum economist, held positions at the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, BP and Petro-Canada. He is a member of the Group of 78’s Board of Directors and lives in Kingston ON. His blog is johnfosterwrites.com.

Speaker:

Ernie Regehr is Senior Fellow at The Simons Foundation of Vancouver and Research Fellow at the Centre for Peace Advancement, Conrad Grebel University College, the University of Waterloo. He is co-founder of Project Ploughshares, and his publications on peace and security issues include books, monographs, journal articles, policy papers, parliamentary briefs, and op-eds. He has traveled frequently to conflict zones, especially in East Africa, contributed to Track II diplomacy efforts related to the conflict in southern Sudan, and is on the Board of the Africa Peace Forum of Nairobi, Kenya. He is a former Commissioner of the World Council of Churches Commission on International Affairs, where he was active in developing the WCC’s position on R2P. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada.