On October 7, the New Europe Center hosted a meeting of the New Europe Club on the topic “Securing the Euro-Atlantic together: the Ukraine–NATO practical track”.

The participants were welcomed by Joseph Dobbs, Head of Political Affairs, NATO Representation to Ukraine.

The guest speakers of the event were Burcu San, Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Operations, NATO, Tarja Jaakkola, Assistant Secretary General for Defence Industry and Innovation, NATO, and Stacy Cummings, General Manager, NATO Support and Procurement Agency.

In a trusting atmosphere, in «an off-the-record format», representatives of NATO and the Ukrainian expert community discussed a wide range of issues, including NATO’s overall support for Ukraine, military cooperation, and collaboration in the defense industry.

“The scale of cooperation between Ukraine and NATO is truly impressive. Representatives of the Alliance provided a detailed overview of the practical dimension of our intensive partnership. They also had an opportunity to listen to and take note of the comments and recommendations from representatives of Ukraine’s leading think tanks and civil society organizations. The discussion demonstrated how valuable Ukraine’s experience is for NATO, and how significant the Alliance’s practical assistance is for Ukrainians through numerous initiatives and projects. PURL, NSATU, JATEC — these abbreviations were mentioned so frequently that they may soon become as recognizable as NATO itself”, said Sergiy Solodkyy, Director of the New Europe Center, summarizing the event.

The New Europe Club is an expert platform for open exchange of views between representatives of Ukraine and foreign partners on key security and foreign policy issues.

This event is funded by the UK government as part of the “Mutual Transformative Power: changing Ukraine through cooperation with wider Europe” project, implemented by the New Europe Center.

Photo report of the meeting could be found here.