The future of Ukraine

Rory Finnin is Professor of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Cambridge. He launched Cambridge Ukrainian Studies in 2008. He is former Head of the Department of Slavonic Studies (2014-18) and former Chair of the Cambridge Committee for Russian and East European Studies (CamCREES) (2011-18). Rory Finnin is a trustee of the Ukrainian Institute London.

Nataliya Gumenyuk is a Ukrainian journalist and author specialising in foreign affairs and conflict reporting. She is the CEO of the Public Interest Journalism Lab and Co-Founder and Lead Journalist of The Reckoning Project, which documents war crimes in Ukraine. Gumenyuk is the author of several documentaries and books, including The Lost Island: Tales From The Occupied Crimea, and Maidan Tahrir. Nataliya regularly writes for The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Rolling Stone, Die Zeit, and The Atlantic. She also provides commentaries for CNN, MSNBC, Sky News, and Monocle. Gumenyuk was the co-founder and head of independent Ukrainian media Hromadske TV and Hromadske International for five years and is currently a Board Member. Gumenyuk is a Member of the Councilfor Freedom for Speech Under the President of Ukraine, as well as the Independent Media Council.

Christina Lamb OBE is Chief Foreign Correspondent at The Sunday Times and one of Britain’s leading foreign journalists as well as a bestselling author. She has reported from most of the world’s hotspots from Afghanistan to Ukraine after an unexpected wedding invitation led her to Karachi in 1987 when she was just 21, and has won numerous awards including six times being named Foreign Correspondent of the Year. She has authored ten books including Our Bodies Their Battlefields, What War does to Women and co-writing I Am Malala with Malala Yousafzai. She is a Global Envoy for UN Education Cannot Wait, an Honorary Fellow of University College Oxford, on the International Board of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting and an Associate of the Imperial War Museum.

Pedro Serrano is the European Union’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom. He was Chief of Staff to the EU High Representative for foreign affairs and security policy and EC Vice President, Josep Borrell Fontelles until October 2022, and his previous roles include that of Deputy Secretary General for Common Security and Defence Policy and Crisis Response at the European External Action Service. Serrano also served as Diplomatic Advisor to the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, and he became first EU Ambassador to the United Nations in New York, after the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, having before that been a career Spanish diplomat. Among his focusses are EU security and defence policy, and EU foreign policy, on which he has published numerous articles.

Dame Melinda Simmons was the British Ambassador to Ukraine until September 2023. She began her career in international sales and moved from there to work for an NGO specialising in conflict prevention and resolution in war torn countries. She progressed to the Civil Service and worked for the Department for International Development in several policy roles, including a tour overseas in South Africa as well as heading up the Middle East and the Europe Departments. She also worked for the National Security Secretariat at the Cabinet Office, setting up and running a cross government fund focused on prevention and resolution of violent conflict, before transferring to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Before taking up the role in Kyiv Melinda was head of Conflict Department, and among her work there campaigned for justice for crimes of sexual violence against women and girls in war-torn countries. She also specialised in United Nations peacekeeping and peacebuilding. Dame Melinda has a Bachelors degree in Modern Languages (from Exeter University), and a Masters Degree in European Politics. She also has an honorary PhD from Exeter University awarded in 2023. She speaks French, German and Ukrainian, and as part of a lifelong passion for foreign languages, has previously studied modern Hebrew, Spanish, Dutch and Russian. She is an associate member of the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development.

Olesya Khromeychuk is the Director of the Ukrainian Institute London. She is a historian and writer. She has taught the history of East-Central Europe at several British universities, and has written for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, Der Spiegel, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Prospect. Khromeychuk is the author of The Death of a Soldier Told by His Sister (2022) and “Undetermined” Ukrainians. Post-War Narratives of the Waffen SS “Galicia” Division (2013).