Putin will not win: My encounter with Europe’s new-found optimism

September 13, 2026 — 11:30am

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In Kyiv on Friday, the annual Yalta European Strategy (YES) Conference convened deep beneath the embattled capital’s Intercontinental Hotel. Originally held at the storied Crimean city where, in 1945, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt redrew the map of postwar Europe, the conference was moved to Kyiv after the Russian invasion in 2014 – the name unchanged to preserve the historical resonances (and the acronym).

I was among about 300 people who crowded into a warren of reception rooms which doubles as the hotel’s air raid shelter. They included current and former prime ministers, defence and foreign ministers, policymakers, diplomats, academics, editors, foreign correspondents, commentators and several Ukrainian military leaders.

The big names included David Petraeus (the former US commander in Iraq), Boris Johnson, famous international relations scholars such as Niall Ferguson and Anne Applebaum, her husband, Radek Sikorski (Poland’s deputy PM), and the national security advisers of Britain, France, Germany and Italy. The American delegation included no fewer than three senators and five congressmen.

The biggest delegation was Britain’s – which is only fitting since, in the early days after Russia invaded in February 2022, Boris Johnson’s government led global opinion by its immediate, unswerving support for Ukraine while Joe Biden dithered. Johnson, deservedly, is hugely admired here; there will be statues of him in Kyiv long before there is ever one in London.

Volodymyr Zelensky is always the star turn........

© WA Today