Within the framework of activities of the international civil society platform CivilM+, the German NGO DRA e.V. and the Slovak Foreign Policy Association SFPA invite you to the presentation of a research on local elections in the war zone of Donbas in the context of conflict resolution.

The event will be online and is scheduled for 22 October 2020, 10-11.30 a.m. (Kyiv time), with an online stream on Facebook. An expert team of the international NGO-platform CivilM+ will present a briefing note outlining outcomes of the research conducted in October 2020 and based on in-depth interviews with political and social actors who work in governmentcontrolled territory in the east and in Kyiv.

The local elections in the conflict region of Donbas highlight main political dilemmas and will impact the process of conflict resolution in the next years. The risks and challenges arising from these dilemmas should be transformed into the goals and tasks to be handled by the Ukrainian government, local authorities, political elite and civil society as well as by the international community.

Speakers (the authors of the research, experts of the international civil society platform CivilM+):

• Samuel Goda, Head of Future of Security and Cooperation in Europe Program, SFPA, Assistant Professor at the University of Economics in Bratislava,
• Wilfried Jilge, Associate Fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP/Berlin), member of the Strategy Group “Key States” within the project “Strategies for the European Neighborhood” of the Bertelsmann Foundation,
• Valerii Novikov, Head of the Luhansk Regional Human Rights Center ‘Alternative’ (Kyiv), de jure deputy of the city council of the now occupied Alchevsk (Luhansk region).

Moderator: Yuliya Erner, Coordinator of the international civil society platform CivilM+, project manager at the DRA e.V (Berlin).

According to the program of the event, short presentations of the speakers will be followed by a Q&A session and the discussion on the potential impact of the elections on socio-political situation in the conflict zone (as well as in Ukraine as a whole), in particular with regards to the opportunities/perspectives for reintegration of the temporarily occupied territories.