At the invitation of Lithuania’s foreign minister, Linas Linkevičius, ICDS director Sven Sakkov and head of studies Tomas Jermalavičius participated in the Snow Meeting 2019—a premier annual security- and foreign-policy event organised by the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
As every year, this 12th meeting was held near the town of Trakai and brought together a group of distinguished policymakers, think-tankers, academics, practitioners and media representatives from Europe and North America to discuss, under Chatham House rules, various current and emerging challenges to transatlantic security.
Sven Sakkov moderated the intensive and engaging panel discussion in the “night owls” session in which Ukrainian foreign minister Pavlo Klimkin, Polish president’s chief of the cabinet Krzysztof Szczerski, director of the Russia programme at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) Brian Whitmore, commander of NFIU (NATO Force Integration Unit) Lithuania Col. Jakob Larsen and Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology professor, Joseph Siracusa, debated Western strategies for dealing with a revisionist Russia.
Tomas Jermalavičius was a panel moderator for a session dedicated to NATO at 70 that included Slovakia’s foreign minister Miroslav Lajčák, Lithuanian minister of national defence Raimundas Karoblis and NATO deputy assistant secretary-general James Appathurai, as well as Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of US Army Europe and Pershing Chair of Strategic Studies at CEPA.
The event also addressed such topics as the future of the global security order in the context of the ongoing clash of value systems as well as risks and opportunities associated with closer European defence cooperation.
