Speeches by foreign diplomats, Ukrainian MPs and national resilience experts accompanied the discussion.

Dmitri Teperik, the Director of the 'Resilient Ukraine' programme and the Chief Executive of the International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS), had opening remarks. “Resilient Ukraine” has been performing different kinds of activities already for 5 years, and now we are working to elaborate standards of national security in order to strengthen the concept”, – the expert said.

Vineta Kleine, the Director of the NATO Information and Documentation Center in Ukraine, noted that strengthening resilience requires work in defence interests of a state. “Resilience is an important basis to build state defence.During the NATO Warsaw summit of 2016 a decision was made to strengthen that resilience”, – Ms. Kleine stated.

MP from the “Servant of the People” faction Mariana Bezuhla continued the discussion stressing that national resilience is closely connected with intelligence agencies’ work. “One of the most crucial priorities to strengthen Ukraine’s resilience has been the adoption of the law ”On intelligence”. It includes a full “package” which increases a country's awareness and decision-making as well as introduces the system of decision-making support for leadership of the state”, – the MP added.

Solomiia Bobrovska, the MP from “Golos”, backed the decision to block TV channels affiliated with Victor Medvedchuk. “I don’t see a threat to the freedom of speech in Ukraine because of blocking obviously aggressive TV channels that retranslate Russian propaganda. The given channels are funded by the aggressor state and promote “soft” occupation of Ukraine. That is why the response on the part of Ukraine had to be unambiguous and decisive”, – said Ms. Bobrovska.

Ambassador of Estonia to Ukraine Kaimo Kuusk gave the advice for Ukrainian authorities to inform international partners about Ukraine’s steps of protecting national security in a timely way and on as broad a basis as possible. “Estonia has welcomed Ukraine’s step to impose sanctions on the oligarch and block certain TV channels because we support Ukraine in its attempts to protect itself… We support everything that you do under your legislation and maybe we would advise to disseminate information in time about it via as many channels as possible - through government channels of information and even through intelligence services”, – Mr Kuusk noted.

“Each law is a seperate brick to “construct” national resilience. We have a detailed national resilience strategy, the 47-th article of which reads about implementation of the national system of resilience”. However, “resilience has not been specified in legislation”, – stressed Oleksii Henchev, the Acting Director-General of the Government Office for Coordination of European and Euro-Atlantic integration. 

The representative of the above-mentioned Government Office has mentioned joint exercises with NATO. “This year  together with NATO we plan to carry out joint exercises “Coherent Resilience 2021” in Odesa aimed at countering hybrid threats to critical infrastructure in the Black Sea region.These exercises will help to build inter-agency interaction as well as communication between public institutions and citizens”, – Mr. Oleksiy emphasized. 

Dmitri Teperik, the Director of the 'Resilient Ukraine' programme, continued the topic about the importance of interactions between a state and its citizens. “We are sure that the major sources of national resilience are reliable institutions and sustainable communities. Having this in mind, “Resilient Ukraine” team takes steps to strengthen practical inter-agency cooperation on resilience among civil society, government, expert community, mass media and business in vulnerable regions of Ukraine”, – highlighted the Estonian specialist.

Head of the Research Center for Regional Security Nikolay Nazarov emphasized that a more resilient Ukrainian society would foster Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic integration. “The concept of resilience is that parameter and instrument which will bring Ukraine closer to implement NATO’s standards”, – Mr. Nazarov stated.

The ‘Resilient Ukraine’ programme continues its activities in Sumy, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhya, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa oblasts and plans numerous events encompassing analytical and educational work for improving ad-hoc awareness about existing vulnerabilities and new threats in the regions mentioned above. 

Click here in order to watch the full version of the discussion.