On 3 March, ICDS Head of Studies Tomas Jermalavičius spoke at the conference “Strengthening Societal Resilience against Hybrid Threats in the Baltic Region”.
The conference was organised by Lithuania’s National Defence Foundation and hosted in Vilnius by the National Defence and Security Committee of the Lithuanian Parliament (Seimas). Drawing upon national experiences, speakers from Belarus, Estonia, Finland, Poland, Sweden and Ukraine discussed the multidimensional nature of societal resilience and ways it might be enhanced as a hedge against the equally complex and dynamic environment of hybrid threats. Russia’s approach to destabilising Western societies and undermining their liberal democratic order featured prominently in the discussions, including in keynote remarks by Edward Lucas, Senior Vice President of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), and Russian opposition activist Gary Kasparov. In his presentation, Tomas Jermalavičius explained how societal resilience forms the basis for a whole-of-society response to hybrid threats and outlined the state of play in Estonia. The conference was attended by around 300 participants from government, public, private and civil society organisations in the Baltic region and broadcast live on Lithuania‘s most popular online news portal, Delfi.lt.