 So, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome. I'm pleased to see you here, in spite of our unusually nice summer, probably we're always obsessed with the weather here and in this case, you've arrived to find us going through for us an unusual heat wave by our standards. It's my great pleasure today to be able to introduce Pavel Klimkin. He is the Foreign Minister of Ukraine, nominated to that position in June of 2014 by President Poroshenko after the revolution of dignity at Maidan that we all followed so closely, and which has been the subject of more than one event here minister over the years. Pavel was born in Kursk in Russia. He was educated as a prestigious institute in Moscow, is a graduate in physics and mathematics, is a citizen of Ukraine, has a long work experience as a diplomat, served as a junior diplomat at one stage in Germany. He worked very much on the association agreement between Ukraine and European Union as Deputy Foreign Minister. He was head of staff in the Foreign Ministry. He returned to Germany as full ambassador in 2012 and then was appointed in June 2014 to the position of minister, which he still holds. He is going to talk to us today about the situation in Ukraine, of course, Crimea and Donbas and the workload that that imposes also in terms of foreign policy, about the Euro-Atlantic aspirations of Ukraine. There's much to get through. I do not intend to give an extended introduction because I would like you to hear our guests and we will have an opportunity to pose questions afterwards. So minister, you have just, I think, fairly recently had your Normandy format meeting with foreign ministers. The Normandy format, which really coincided with an event hosted by President Hollande in Normandy to recall the D-Day events at which Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine were present at the level of their presidents. They had a meeting there, which I guess was informal, but it became somewhat formalized into the Normandy process from which those states, Ukraine, Germany, France, and Russia continued dialogue. So to hear about what's going on at foreign ministers' level, I think, will be very interesting to understand the current situation in Donbass, which unhappily, although there is a mince process and a peace process, remains a killing field. I get daily reports from the EU mission in Kyiv for the past several years, and hardly a day goes by without reports of deaths and serious injuries to a military personnel, but also to civilians. We have the aspirations to do with the NATO that I mentioned, which have a growing public support in Ukraine, and there is a membership action plan, which I'm sure the minister will speak to. And then we had the question, what might happen when there was a change of administration in the United States? And while it's always sometimes a bit difficult to try to read exactly the dynamics of contemporary politics in the United States, the system itself, as such, has shown a deep engagement with Ukraine, the appointment of a special envoy and the person of Kurt Volker, the provision of some weaponry that had been denied in the past for defensive purposes, and the agreement to the membership action plan in NATO, are all elements that show that on the U.S. side, there has been strong support. Of course, on the EU side, the engagement is a very deep and growing one. There has been huge reform in Ukraine in the recent past, more than in the past 20 years, perhaps done in the past three or four years, and still much to do. So minister, we look forward to hearing what you have to say and then to your response to questions. Thank you for joining us. Dear colleagues, dear friends, it's pleasure been there, actually second time, because I remember quite well my first time, when I was chatting here about the registration agreement, it was completely different reality. It seemed to be a virtual reality because I was chief negotiator for the Ukraine registration agreement. We've just started talking about visa free for Ukraine, and at the same time, it was completely different political reality in Ukraine. It was about Yanukovych, a kind of total split of mind. I hope I successfully concluded our negotiations and have been sent as ambassador to Germany. I did not mind this time because I could not see myself as someone driving politics in Kiev. Under previous reality, and Pat, you remember, it's exactly when we met first in a good conversation because you were trying to help us. It was not easy to help Ukraine when it's steered by people like Yanukovych. But here is my point, and of course, there could be a lot of formal things, actually, commented people like Pat. What is amazing for me, and I mean amazing, you never given up on Ukraine, also under very difficult times. Also when we needed a friendly touch and friendly push in 2014, going on with comprehensive reforms and our parliament basically changing the way how our politics operates. And we are not there, let me say it quite clearly. We are not there in the sense of transforming our country and our society. From the post-soviet reality we had for many, many years under independence, to democratic and European country and society. And just keep saying that it's our goal to become real Europeans, to become democratic country, attached to rule of law. It could sound like a platitude, but it's not. It's not in the case of Ukraine. Many people started identifying Ukraine on the screens with the Maidan, before that, what was a sort of a key role about Ukraine? It was about glitch-course, yeah, of course, something which is important, kind of identification. Timoshenko, you know, sitting in jail, yeah, definitely. Fundamentally Chernobyl and maybe football and dynamarchy, but beyond that, it was just Ukraine, a country dragging along with the system which didn't have a chance to progress. And it's exactly why people basically came up with, not with slogans, not with requirements, but with their emotions, very sincere emotions going from their hearts. Now, if you listen to the Russians, you've mentioned Normandy Ministerial, or what are we meeting? The narrative which is reproduced here, but also by Lavrov, okay, in 2014, you had a coup, a state coup in Ukraine. It was a nationalistic coup, so now it's about sort of junta driving Ukraine. You know, I participated, still being ambassador in Germany in all that. You know, my Russian is okay, actually without accent. My mother is Russian, I studied in Moscow, I'm a physicist by education. And thousands of Ukrainians around Maidan, in different places in Ukraine, felt the same way. So the question is why? And why us Ukrainians are different from the Russian society? And let me check it really clear. It's not about myself blaming just the Russian narrative. And there were different times in our history, but we came forward to fight for our Ukraine how we understand it. And we understand it as freedom, as democracy, as our European mentality and history, and it's more than a thousand years. It's about our way, how we feel Ukraine either can go forward or should fall backwards to Russia. And it's not about just putting forward anti-Russian sentiment. It's about the regime in Russia now having decided to take part of our territory, having decided that they could create a sort of sphere of influence around Russia. And basically, taking decisions about Ukraine and about us Ukrainians instead of ourselves. So our idea from the very beginning was not to fight Russia. It's not about Ukrainians who have taken part of the Russian territory. It was about Russian regime decisions to come into Ukraine, firstly into the Crimean Peninsula with the famous green men, typical Russian narrative and after that, not just to Donbass, to the whole Ukraine. And Russian idea was not to fight Russia. To establish pro-Russian reality. Russian idea was to try to fragment Ukraine, to weaken us up, to establish a sort of Russian idea or federalization, basically having a sort of literate on the decision of the central government on everything. I mean defense, foreign policy, economic policy. And at the end of the day, depriving us Ukrainians of our responsibility and our say about our future and about our way forward. It's why we've been fighting against the Russian regime. It's why we've been fighting against the Russian aggression also enjoying solidarity from the civilized world. And for me, it was a game changer. We believed, we ruled, we lived in a rule-based world. We gave our part of nuclear weaponry in the nineties and got this famous Budapest memorandum, political commitments about our security. We believed commitments were commitments. Now we understand it was not at least on the part of Russia. So our fight and we will keep fighting. We will keep fighting for our Ukraine, our understanding in Ukraine. And what we want is simply to have the fate of our Ukraine and our hands to take up very difficult but sovereign decision about our current reality and our future. Building up the future Ukraine on the basis of democracy, human rights and to put a human in the center of our understanding of our Ukrainian reality. To create a new commitment to rule of law because one of the most drawbacks in Ukraine is the lack of rule of law. So very simple things. To transform Ukraine from the post-Soviet reality into the European and democratic reality. Russia and Russian leadership, they had completely different opinions. It's coming from the Russian Empire through the Soviet Union and Stalin and famous Holodomor, the great famine in Ukraine which exterminated millions of Ukrainians just because they were Ukrainians and were attached to them. So it's just about simple things to become Ukrainians, to become masters of our life. Russia did not want and does not want to allow us such a noble goal to realize. Why? Very simple. Because Ukrainian success as democratic and European country would fundamentally negate everything what is going on in Russia in the reality of a country where there is no real democracy, no real rule of law, where we have now more than 70 political prisoners, many of them on hunger strike. And what is important, not fighting for themselves but fighting for their friends. Like our military is fighting not just for himself but fighting for Ukraine and their brothers and aunts. Russia is a reality. We have to deal with this reality. But it's a very important lesson for every one of us. All kind of destabilization, all kind of problems starting from propaganda, cyber threats, towards assassinations. We had Salisbury a couple of months ago. Everything which has been happening in Ukraine and which definitely will come in the run up to our elections and what will be tested in Ukraine in the future will be applied here. In what way it's a different story but will be definitely applied here. So my call to everyone and it's very simple. Russia does not live in the vacuum and we need a sense of solidarity. Only by solidarity political pressure, consistent sanctions and our drive forward we can win against such autocracies. Remember the famous sequel of Star Wars. It's always about empire fighting against good people and good people never give up. Russia is fundamentally interested in weakening up and breaking democratic institutions. Russia believes that liberal values or democratic values is not the way forward. We are interested to strengthen our world and our sense of the future. Let's take Donbass. It would have been extremely easier to get peace back to Donbass. Why? And how? It's just about getting international component into the occupied territory. It could be peacekeeping operation. It could be international administration. It could be police mission. It could be combination of that. Russia does not want to. Lavrov told us in the last Normandy ministerial very clearly we don't want our guys and our structures to be transformed into occupied Donbass. What we want is just a kind of special status to legitimize what we already achieved there. So if it's about legitimization of occupation and using Donbass as a sort of trojan horse to push into Ukraine and to destabilize us and to destroy the European project, Ukrainian democratic project, it's not our way of seeing it and it's not the way how all democratic countries see it further. Of course, for Russia, it's all about trade-offs. It's about using political prisoners as a trade-off. It's about using Donbass trade-off, people of Donbass, everyone. Russia is a different reality, not focused on people, focused on grandeur, power. But we have a great chance to win against that reality because it's not sustainable. And it's about us going forward. And if we give up, I believe we are nowhere. So we'll keep fighting. We believe it's just about helping our people to occupy territories, they are Ukrainian citizens, to get back to Ukraine. So it's not just about territory, it's about people. It's about our solidarity. It's about going forward consistently with sanctions and with political pressure. And it's important that the U.S. administration had started targeting not just Russian state companies, but also Russian oligarchs and companies which are behind the Russian system because it's the same system. There is no way of flexibility there. But it's also important to have support of everyone, including here in Ireland. It's really important in the sense of the Crimean non-recognition policy not to allow anyone to break the sanctions regime, including here, Irish business. You know, it's your personal decision, I mean not your personal decision, but someone's personal decision to engage with Russian business. But to engage on the occupied territory in Crimea, it's against the law because sanctions, it's about law. And it's about solidarity. And again, it's about our way forward. So fundamentally, the Russian narrative and you have Russia today here, you know, every into the whole Europe about the kind of nationalistic regime basically steering in Ukraine. Anyway, I'm a driver and all this stuff, but simply have a look how it all started. How it all started and what the stakes were in this fight. For our Ukraine, for Ukrainians, not meddling into the Russian elections, it's about Russians meddling into our elections, not taking part of the Russian territory, it's about Russia taking part of our territory. It's about Russia trying to get us back into the sphere of influence. And with all kind of these points, it's not about fighting against sort of Russian mentality or history. It's about fighting against the regime in Russia, which has completely different goal in front of it. But I am fully convinced we will be successful. We simply have to be successful. With good friends like Pete, with good people around. And last point you've mentioned, I'm a physicist by education. I remember how one of my professors told me many, many years ago, you know, I certainly forgot everything I had learned in my career about physics. So he told me a story about Albert Einstein teaching in Zurich University and distributing different tasks among the students. And one of the students raised his hand, so, you know, wavering and said, but professor, these are the same tasks. We had two years ago and Einstein said, it's fine, but the answers are different. I believe the answers are different. Even with such Russia, we have in front of us. But our answers should be about maintaining our democratic legacy and our way forward. Again, it sounds like a platitude, but now it's not. It's about our way of life and it's about our way forward. Thanks a lot. Let me stop here because I can speak for quite a while. And I will try to, at least to try, you know, to answer all of your points. But again, very simple message. We will keep fighting. We won't stop here. And we understand what we want to achieve. And we need friends to help us, to help us along. Very simple. Thanks again. It's great to be here second time. It's not a sort of tradition, but already coming to this direction. It's great to have Pat, you know, also here in this institute and basically in Dublin because we met probably 100 times, but never in Dublin. It's a shame. And it's great to have such friends. Thanks again for today's opportunity.