INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC AND PRACTICAL CONFERENCE “CRISIS OF MODERN GEOPOLITICS: THE WORLD BETWEEN DEMOCRACY AND AUTHORITARIANISM”

On March 27-28, 2025, the International Scientific and Practical Conference “The Crisis of Modern Geopolitics: The World Between Democracy and Authoritarianism” was held at the Hryhorii Skovoroda University in Pereiaslav. This is an annual scientific event that has brought together a wide range of domestic and foreign participants for the fifteenth time in a row. This year, more than 130 participants took part in the conference.

The conference is co-organized by the I.F. Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. On behalf of the Institute, the conference participants were greeted by Deputy Director for Research, Head of the Department of World Political Development, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Oleksandr Maiboroda. He emphasized that the Russian-Ukrainian war is a war between authoritarianism and democracy, and even more so, between democracy and an attempt to return to totalitarian regimes. The authoritarian regimes that are now acting as a united front against democracy are acquiring fascist features with a high probability of turning into totalitarianism. This dangerous trend is confirmed by the fact that in recent years more countries have moved from democracy to authoritarianism than from authoritarianism to democracy. The geopolitical crisis is not only a crisis of international relations, it is a crisis of the common political space, political thought, and the general political philosophy of the world. Authoritarianism, in order to create crises in the geopolitical space, first takes advantage of a crisis in its own country, tries to establish itself and gain popularity through populism, and then tries to impose its forms of government on the world. This is a very dangerous trend that needs to be studied, to find out the reasons and factors that lead to this: economic, social, political, and civilizational. Authoritarianism thus poses a danger to the further development of humanity. This is a phenomenon that revives from time to time, gaining support, which requires scientific and public discussion and reflection.

Oleksandr Maiboroda speaking

 The conference participants focused on discussing a wide range of issues: authoritarianism and revanchism; challenges of the current stage of democratic transit; the Russian-Ukrainian war as a factor of geopolitical transformations; ethnopolitical and national resilience in the context of global instability; information wars in geopolitical strategies of states; political futurology of the post-crisis period; civil-military cooperation: challenges and tasks in the new geopolitical realities.

At the plenary session, the staff of our Institute made presentations: Oleh Kalakura (“Peculiarities of the soft power strategy of culture in the foreign policy of the warring Ukraine”), Oleksiy Lyashenko (“Principles of the (post-war) state system of Ukraine in the context of the EU experience”) and Rostyslav Balaban (“Is democracy losing value?”).

The participants of the sessions were: Vasyl Kozma, Oleh Kondratenko, Tetyana Lyashenko, Maksym Kyiak, Natalia Kochan, Liudmyla Mazuka, Valeriy Novorodovsky, Iryna Ovchar, Anatoliy Podolsky, Alina Yasinska, and Vladyslav Velgus.

Conference participants