The war in Ukraine has come to crystallise many of the tensions confronting international relations in the 21st century: questions about the resilience of international law and the principle of sovereignty, the erosion of multilateralism, the return of open great-power competition, and the growing difficulty of separating fact from narrative in a contested information environment.
How the war is understood, however, depends a great deal on where one sits. For Ukraine and much of Europe, it is a war of aggression against a sovereign state and against the European security order. For Russia, it is a response to NATO’s expansion and a contest over its neighbourhood. For South Africa and many across the African continent, it is also a conflict whose economic and diplomatic consequences are felt far from the front line and one that raises pointed questions about consistency, double standards, and the standing of states outside the conflict to call for peace on their own terms.
At the same time, the peaceful resolution of this war could become a reference point for conflict resolution in the 21st century. In seeking such a settlement, we are not only answering the question, “What kind of peace do we want in Ukraine?”; we are also asking what kind of order will follow: one in which power increasingly dictates outcomes or one in which collective action by middle and emerging powers can still shape the terms of peace. It is with these questions in mind that South Africa, and indeed many other African nations, continue to seek a negotiated and durable peace in Ukraine, one that respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states while recognising that a lasting settlement will require addressing the concerns of all parties to the conflict.
In this seminar, Ambassador Dr Oleksandr Scherba will set out Ukraine’s perspective on the war and what it sees as being at stake for the international order. His remarks will open a wider conversation about how South Africa and the Global South read this conflict and about the kind of peace they wish to see.
Speaker
- Dr Oleksandr Scherba, Ambassador of Ukraine to the Republic of South Africa
Dr Scherba is a Ukrainian diplomat currently serving as Ambassador of Ukraine to South Africa, having previously served as Ambassador to Austria between 2014 and 2021. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the Kyiv Institute of International Relations. He has worked across diplomacy, political advisory and international economic negotiations, including engagements with the IMF and EU. Since 2008, he has also contributed as a columnist to Ukraine’s weekly newspaper Dzerkalo Tyzhnia.
We look forward to your participation.
