THE 16TH CONFERENCE ON BALTIC STUDIES IN EUROPE (CBSE) “CONVERGING PATHS: THE BALTIC BETWEEN EAST AND WEST”

From April 24 to 26, 2025, Alyona Hurkivska, an acting research fellow at the Department of Political Culture and Ideology at the I. F. Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, participated in the 16th Baltic Studies Conference in Europe (CBSE), titled “Converging Paths: The Baltic between East and West.” The event was organised by the Centre for Geopolitics at the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies and other partners in Cambridge, United Kingdom.

CBSE 2025 was the largest conference in the Association’s history, bringing together over 500 scholars and practitioners in public policy. Participants discussed current trends and challenges facing the Baltic region amid geopolitical turbulence, highlighting the need for multilateral and interdisciplinary approaches. A particular focus was placed on enhancing the region’s role following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

At the conference, Alyona Hurkivska presented a summary of the article titled “Developing Resilience in Information Warfare.”

Alyona Hurkivska speaking at the conference.

Her analysis of Ukraine’s state information policy from 2014 to 2022 identified key principles for building resilience that could also be relevant for Baltic countries.

Among the main principles she highlighted were:

• improving the quality of public discourse to strengthen social cohesion;
• replacing the “one-voice” policy with open dialogue;
• fostering partnerships with stakeholders; encouraging horizontal interagency cooperation;
• developing evidence-based and adaptive information policies with mandatory evaluation phases and clear performance indicators;
• and promoting government openness as a sign of strength in the context of information warfare.