If you've watched any of my previous videos, you know that my color scheme for my clothes, for my room, it's pretty boring. I like blue, I like red, I like dark. I don't know why. I think mainly because I don't have a good sense of color and I don't know what colors work well together. So when it comes to making a plot, it's all the harder to pick good colors that go well together. In today's episode of Code Club, I'm going to show you the strategy that I use to picking colors that work well in a variety of environments. Hey folks, I'm Pat Schloss and this is Code Club. In each episode of Code Club, I use reproducible methods to apply them to an interesting biological question. The biological question or the question that I'm working with doesn't really matter because today we're going to talk about how we can change colors in a plot and how we can choose colors that work well together. Perhaps you've run the colors function in R and seen the hundreds of different named colors there are, things like thistle. What color is that? Much less thistle five, right? I don't know. So what we're going to do is we're going to use a online tool called Color Brewer to help us to pick a set of colors that will work well in our figures. If you recall the past couple of episodes, I put in a few colors. I think it was like black, red, blue, green. Again, primary colors. I don't know anything about color, but I know that those colors are bad in part because red and green do not work well together. A good fraction of men cannot differentiate between red and green. And so if you're giving a seminar and you're using red and green to highlight different treatment groups, know that if there's say 50 people in your audience that the odds are good that you'll have a few people that can't see the difference between those colors. And so that makes it all the more a good reason to pick colors that we can use to discriminate between your treatment groups that are accommodating the largest number of people in your audience. Along the way, we'll see a reproducible approach that we can take to make sure that our colors are consistent across figures so we have kind of consistent branding, if you will, within our own manuscript. I'll show you Color Brewer, which is really good for picking color palettes that keep in mind things like red, green color deficiency, and I'll also show you another color palette that I'm a fan of for a little bit more whimsical from the West Anderson color palette package as an alternative to see what other kind of color palettes are out there. Okay, let's go ahead to our project. And I'm going to, for now, open up my figures, my PDF files, and show you what we've got so far. This first one, where we are looking at the number of ASVs per R and copy is black with that blue line. And so that doesn't have any color that I need to worry about. And over here, for our rock curve, that's the supplemental figure one, and then this our lumping and splitting, which will be figure two, I think. Again, we have black, blue, green, red, those are not ideal colors. And so, but I have the same color scheme in both plots, because again, I've got the same four regions. And I want someone to know that this black in figure one, or figure two, rather, is the same black that's in supplemental figure one. Good. So that's our task today is to find good colors that we can put into these figures. Let's go over to our browser and a website I want to share with you is called colorbrewer2.org. It's designed, I believe, for cartographers, people that make maps. But I find it also useful for picking color schemes that go well together, as well as satisfy a certain set of criteria. So we have, we have four groups, data classes. So I'm going to go ahead and change that to four. And you'll see that there's sequential sources kind of like heat map rate, where you have like low value in this lighter color to high value in this darker color. There's diverging, which is kind of the same, but going in opposite directions. And then there's qualitative, which is the one that I'm going to work with. And so you can see that we've got four qualitative different colors for my four different classes. The other thing then we see here are that there are eight different color schemes that we could choose that would allow us to have four qualitative data classes. Down here, this four class accent, it that is the name of that class, I believe. And so this one is dark to and there's a variety of these different palettes. There's the hexadecimal code here that we could use in place of named colors like black, blue, red, green. I'll show you how we can do that. The other thing I like about this site is that you can have it show you only those palettes that are colorblind safe. And so that narrows it down pretty quickly to this four class paired, which doesn't give us a lot of choices. So thinking about it, what I might do is three classes and and I'll add black as a fourth class. So I don't like having two shades of blue there so much. I kind of like this dark again dark. I don't know why color palette. And so this again is dark to and it gives us those three hexadecimal codes. So I think I'm going to work with this. I like this and I like the confidence again that I'm picking a color palette that is accommodating of the most people in my audience and keeping in mind the sizable fraction of people, especially men that can't can't differentiate between red and green. Okay. So coming back to our studio. Let me go to my code directory. And I am going to go ahead and open up. Let's do the lump split first. And so here you'll see I have black, blue, green, red. Something to know is that there actually is an R package called our color brewer that allows you to do the same types of processing that I did here on the website. Over in our I personally find that this interface is just easier for me to work with. I encourage you if you're interested to explore it a little bit further and check that out. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and copy these codes. So this is hexadecimal the first two digits. So there's a pound and that tells are that that's hexadecimal. The first two characters are for the red color. The second two are for the green color. And then the blue so red green blue. If this color were red, it would be ff 0000 and for green it'd be 00FF 00 and for blue it'd be 0000FF. And so again, these are hexadecimal codes to give you values between like zero red and full red. And so I'm going to replace blue with that green with this and then red with this. And then we will go ahead and I'm going to come back and do make figures. And this was lump split dot PDF. So I make files complaining at me. I'm not sure what that's about. We'll come back to that, but let's go ahead and open figures rock curve dot PDF or not rock curve. Sorry. It's complaining about rock curve dot tiff. Let's do open figures lump split dot PDF. And so we can then see if we zoom in here are four different colors for v19 v34 v4 v45. I think those those look okay together. Something I want to try is what happened if we instead of black did a dark gray. I think if we do like 999999.  Give us a dark gray color that's not quite black. And I think I'll go with the black. Again, some of this is a matter of personal preference. And, and there's not necessarily a right or wrong answer. It's again personal preference. And I've got a pound sign before the black complaining about, Huh, simple things get hard. And so we see that's black, and that looks good. that looks good. I like having v19 v1 v9 v black because that's kind of the reference for all the others, because that's kind of like the best case scenario. And so I feel like black is a reference to me, it signals reference. And then those other colors are other colors, right other other levels. So that should be good. I'm happy with that. And yeah, I think that I think that looks pretty solid. Now, I'd like to replicate that over in my my plot rock curve file. And maybe we'll figure out what that what it's complaining about there. So I'll put that in here, copy and paste that in. And then I will do make figures rock curve dot PDF. And let me open up that. And so here we see those colors. Again, I think that looks pretty good. I'm happy with that. Again, the more categories you get the harder it is to pick colors. I'm going to open up Adam and figure out what's going on with my make file. The error message I'm getting is overriding commands for target figures rock curve dot tiff. So I must have that in there twice. So line 136, 140 of my make file. Do I have this in here twice? I do. Ah, I must have been doing some copying and pasting. So let's make that tiff. We'll save that and let that run again. Error message goes away. We're up to date. One thing I wanted to show you, I haven't been committing with you because it's boring.  And what I'd like to do is remind you that we have this file called get ignore that we can use to tell get to ignore certain things. So I'll say our plots dot PDF. And now if I do get status, that's gone. But we have modified get ignore. So I'll do a get add dot get ignore.  And I'll say ignore our plots dot PDF files. Okay, good. All right. And of course, we still have these other things that are a work in progress. So what we've done is not entirely is what I frequently do, where we copy and paste that color line over and over again. But it's not dry. And we've talked about dry in the past, which dry means don't repeat yourself. So if I want to change my color scheme, I have to do that in both of these files. And that's not a huge deal. But it's, you know, especially with these codes, it can be, it can be hard to detect differences. What I'd like to do with you is create a new r script that I will call. I'll save this and call those colors dot r, and we'll put it into into code.  So I'm going to call this custom color scale. And it's going to function. And and what should happen is that if we save this, and then source it, if we source colors dot r in here, if I do a source, let's do here, and then do code colors dot r. Well, let's see, maybe you need to run all this stuff too. I don't actually need that library knitter. I've got a plus sign at the end here. So that's not good. Alright, so we'll save that. But now we should have everything in good shape. That's nice. And so now if I do down here, if I say color, custom color scale, it adds that information. And I should be able to replace this scale color manual. So I'll comment this out. And instead, I'll put custom color manual. Alright, so now if we run this, I forgot to run everything else. So let's see, let's run everything else to regenerate this plot. This is the rock curve data. Couldn't find function custom color manual, custom color scale. Yeah, and that worked, right? And again, now if I look at my, again, if I look at my figure of the rock curve dot PDF, I see that it's got my colors. And I can then change my colors in that colors dot r file, and it'll update it there. So that's not such a gain. If there's only one file that we're doing that on, I'll go ahead and remove this. And I will put that into my plot lump split dot r. Again, replacing this scale color manual, put that in there. And I need up here to also do source quote code forward slash colors dot r. Save that. I'll save my plot rock curve dot r. And we're in good shape. So again, I could do make figures, lump split PDF, and then open figures lump split dot PDF. And it's got my colors. Great. So to show you how this would work, if I come back to colors, and instead of black, I make this red, I save that, I then make. Ah, I need it didn't do anything, because I need to add that as a dependency, right? So I need to add code forward slash colors dot r. And then also add that down here. And so now if I do figures lump split figures rock curve PDF, I forgot to PDF. And then I can do open figures rock curve PDF figures lump split dot PDF. And you now see that that red line that that black line is now red. And again, I can update it in that one file. And then it gets propagated across all my other scripts for building these figures. Okay, so I want to show you another color palette that is a bit whimsical, I'll say. And so if I Google search for r and West Anderson, this gets you to a GitHub repository for the West Anderson color palette package. There's a similar one based on colors worn by Beyonce and various photo shoots and whatnot. But these are color palettes inspired by West Anderson movies. And so again, these aren't necessarily the best colors for being friendly towards folks with red, green color deficiency. But I don't know, they allow you to personalize things a little bit yourself. So I kind of like this moonrise. I've never used this before. But why not give it a shot? It's got four colors. And so what I will do is we can install this package. If you don't already hear if you don't already have it installed on your computer, and it's this repository has instructions on how to install it. So again, if I come to our studio, I can do packages West Anderson doesn't look like I have it installed. And then West Anderson, it will install this. And I can then maybe in here I can do library West Anderson in my colors are and in my values. I'm not sure I want to totally get rid of this, but maybe I'll comment out that line and put in values. And then I can do what it said. West Anderson, where'd you go? Let's do moonrise two. So if we do West palette moonrise two, we can see in our studio here, if I do West Anderson, West palette moonrise two, I have to do library West Anderson. And then if I do that palette, I get those four colors. And so that is a West palette. And we'll do moonrise two comma there. And now if we redo our make on both of those files. And we can then again do our open figures rock PDF figures. lump split PDF. We again get our four different colors. You know, those don't look so bad. They're a little bit muted. Again, a lot of this is personal preference and what you think looks well together in terms of composition. And the nice thing about like the West Anderson, if you don't like moonrise two, that perhaps we could do. Oh, what would be another one to try? Let's try this chevelier one. I'm not a big fan of West Anderson movies. They I've always kind of found them a little bit tedious, but I kind of like the color palettes that they they concocted here. So and so here is that color palette. Maybe let me know what you think in the notes in the comments down below. What color palette do you like? Know that there's a lot of different are color palettes out there that you can choose from. Have fun with it. There are color palettes that correspond to like team colors. Am I wearing my cubs hat? Yeah. So you can get like cubs blue and cubs red, which is basically just the primary colors. Not not very adventurous there. I'm probably going to scrap this and go back to using the our color brewer colors here. That wasn't the one I want to delete that one. And so again, the nice thing about having this script, this colors that are script, is that I can update it and it will then update everything else. And so I can then put this back to black. And we'll regenerate those figures. And we can also then update our make our submission manuscript PDF, because it'll trigger manuscript PDF to regenerate, because the figures are prerequisites, or prerequisites of building our manuscript file. So I will then do open submission manuscript PDF. And if I come back down to the bottom, we see that I've got my four colors. And that all looks great. So one thing that caught my eye as we're scrolling back and looking at our figures is that I have our end here in plain font, plain font face. And operands are supposed to be italicized by convention, at least I think. And so what I'd like to quickly do is show us show you all how we can get our end to be italicized. And this is made possible by a package called ggtext. And so if you search for ggtext, see if you've got that installed. If not, go ahead and install it. ggtext. And that's installing. So what I'll then do is go back to my file of plot ESV rate. I don't know why I called it ESV rate, it's ASV rate, whatever. And so what we can do is up here with our libraries, I'll do library, ggtext. And what allows you to do is to use markdown to modify the labels in your plots. And so around our end, we can put a single star. And again, if I make that, and I then save that, and I do make figures, yes, ESV rate dot PDF. And then I open that here. Once this is done running, you'll see that we have the stars around our end. But what we need is with that ggtext, you get a new element called element markdown, which we can then be sure you put a comma at the end of that strip text line, we can do axis dot title dot y equals element markdown, let's save that. And then we will then remake that and look at what it's done. And sure enough, RN has been italicized. This element markdown is a game changer for those of us in microbiology, because sometimes we'll have values or labels on our x axis or y axis or wherever, where we've got bacterial names that we need to italicize, but we don't perhaps need to italicize other things in the figure. And so that's really nice. So I again, need to then update my manuscript and make sure that that gets integrated into the change, change the figure. And if we zoom in, we see that sure enough, the modified figure got integrated into our markdown document. So wasn't intending to cover that today. But that caught my eye and wanted to be sure that we covered that before we move on to the next task. So the next task, what is that? Well, if you look at our figure legends, they're pretty, pretty spartan, they're pretty minimalistic. And so we need to flesh those out. And then I think we'll be in good shape with our figures and ready to move on with the rest of our manuscript and editing and writing abstract and the important section and then getting ready to get it off our desk and submit it. Anyway, I hope you found this discussion today of colors and how we can get different colors into our figures in R. I hope you found it useful. I hope you also consider that this issue of red, green color deficiency, and that we need to do our best to pick colors that aren't red and green. Red is fine, green is fine, just not together. Know that there's a lot of other color palettes out there. We used our color brewer. We also saw the Wes Anderson. There's another one for Beyonce. There's sport teams. There's one called Veritas, all sorts of different color palettes. Aside from picking colors that stay away from red, green color deficiency problems, it's largely a matter of personal preference. Another thing to keep in mind is that we really want to keep the number of variables or levels of our variable to a minimum. We saw that as we go up the number of different classes that we need colors for, the options become more limited. I've seen this be a big problem for people doing microbial ecology studies where they're trying to do these stacked bar plots with like 30 different colors and nobody can differentiate between 30 different colors. And so we need colors that contrast with each other. And to make that most effective, we really need to minimize the number of different classes we have for each of our categorical variables. That's not always easy to do, but again, keep that in mind. All right. So again, I hope you found this useful. Thank you for spending your time with me today. Please be sure to share this with your friends and get them thinking about colors, get all of us thinking about what works and what doesn't work in our different visuals. I don't claim that these plots are the best thing ever, but I think they're pretty functional and they do a good job of showing the story that I'm trying to convey to my reader. Anyway, keep practicing and we'll see you next time for another episode of Code Club.


So good morning everyone, welcome to the United States Institute of Peace and welcome to this event, to this discussion of Ukraine and issues surrounding their transition, eventual transition after their victory from a wartime scenario or a wartime environment to a peacetime environment that has challenges as we know. We are very pleased to be part of the Democracy Summit that's going on across the street here at the State Department. This is an important event, second time we've done this and so Institute of Peace is pleased to be sponsoring this discussion and important part of democracy of course is security. Security has to be there in order for other kinds of values to be present. I'm going to introduce our panel here, good and two of our panelists are from Kyiv and I will introduce them shortly. Let me just say a little bit of why we want to have this conversation and how the panelists fit in. Ukraine is going to win this war. Ukraine is going to win this war as long as the United States and other allies continue to provide the weapons and the support that the Ukrainians need. That has to be the first priority, winning this war. There are other priorities, there are other issues, there are other imperatives, there are other values that we'll want to talk about here today. But I just want to be clear at the outset that right now we're focused and the Ukrainians are focused and the NATO alliance is focused and indeed the alliance that the United States and others have put together in terms of economic support and financial support, humanitarian energy, all of that is going into winning this war and the Ukrainians are doing an incredible job doing that. So we're going to start off with two Ukrainians and they've got a great perspective on this. I'm going to start off shortly, I'm going to come back to them. Daria Kalinuk, Daria is the co-founder and executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center. So Daria has devoted her life and career and focus on reform, all kinds of reform. When I was in Ukraine twice, when I was there in 2006, 2009, but then I was back in 2019, Daria was a, and still is, a leading proponent of reform across the board. And you will hear Daria talk about what winning means. What I've just talked about and how the Ukrainians are going to win this war, Daria has views about how they're going to win this war. And she can talk about the balance or the priority of security on one hand and democratic values on the other. They're not in tension, as Jorgen has pointed out, they are reinforcing. So that's going to be an important thing and Daria has some thoughts on that, as does Alexandra Matyachuk. Alexandra is the head of the Center for Civil Liberties. Many of you will know that the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine won the Nobel Peace Prize last year. And Alexandra heads that organization and, as you can tell from that description, cares a lot about civil liberties, human rights, civil liberties. And again, there is this question of winning the war and civil liberties. And again, not in tension, maybe balanced, maybe priorities, but that's an interesting conversation that we can have with Alexandra. Other nations, other countries have gone through this question, have tried to address the question of how to deal with both security on one hand, living in a difficult part of the world, and democratic values. And it turns out Sweden has been thinking about this for a long time. And we are very pleased to have the defense side of say, Admiral Vickstrom, from Swedish Embassy here, to talk about how Sweden does this balance, how it sets its priorities. As we know, Sweden's been neutral for a long time. And the events of the last year, the events of the Russian invasion of Ukraine have moved Sweden and Admiral can talk about this to a point where they are now on the brink of joining NATO. And again, that balance, that priority between security and democracy is played out in Sweden and other nations. Speaking of other nations, we have Marta Kepe. She's a defense analyst at the RAND Corporation and has studied this question across a wide range of countries and a wide range of situations. So Marta will bring a broad perspective. And both the Admiral and Marta can focus on how Ukraine ought to deal with this. Based on their studies and their experience, they can talk about lessons for Ukraine, how they can strike this balance, again, with the focus on winning the war, but knowing that democratic values are going to be important. Finally, Jordan Andrews. Jordan is a Senior Foreign Service Officer of the State Department. I'm pointing this way because that's where the State Department is. And we borrowed him for the last year to do this work for us on Russia and Ukraine because he has a lot of experience on Russia and Ukraine, both in the State Department and in other parts of his career. So we're very pleased that Jordan could be here both as a part of our team here at the Institute of Peace, but also because, sadly, we'll be losing him sometime going back over to the State Department. He'll take some senior job. We'll all be working for Jordan at some point at this. So the Institute of Peace, just to be clear, we were established in 1984 as a small organization. I was just describing to the Admiral how we've grown. And now we're in this building since 2011, and we're focused on conflict. We're focused on how to resolve, prevent, deal with conflict. There's a conflict going on in this world right now. And this is the one we're going to be talking about today. So I am very pleased to be able to just have this conversation. We're going to have a little conversation up here and up there. But we're also looking forward to any of your questions and comments. I know we've got people online, greetings. And Jacob will be able to take those questions and feed them into us. And so we will do that. So let me start. Daria, with you, I have to look up here. We also have Daria on our screen here. We're cheating. We got this down here, but you guys can see up there. Daria, I have made the point. But this is a lead-in to you that Ukraine will win this war. You've got some thoughts on what winning means. There's a military aspect, but there's a broader aspect, which I'd love for you to describe.  And you have a good sense of how the two work together, what the balance may be, what the priorities are. But Daria, if I can ask you, just give us your thoughts on winning this war and how the democracy and security fits together. Thank you, Ambassador. Thank you for great intro.  We have the vision of winning in a broad sense. So it's obviously a military way and non-military way of taking over all Ukrainian territory internationally recognized as of 1991 here. But in addition to that, it's actually doing everything possible to prevent Russia being able to attack Ukraine again. And by winning, we mean that such kind of security guarantee for Ukraine to prevent new wars would be, first of all, EU and NATO integration. Second, it will be bringing justice. And we believe that winning without holding accountable Russia, and specifically Russian leaders, and then regular war criminals for what they've done to Ukraine without that, winning is not possible. Real winning is not possible. There is huge appetite for justice in Ukraine. It also means reparations. It means that Russia needs to repay all those damage which happened, which it did to Ukrainian people. And when we are thinking about this concept, this broader concept of winning, and taking into account our need for the EU and NATO integration, we also mean rule of law and democracy reforms. Because part of the EU and NATO integration, Ukrainian people, Ukrainian government will need to do huge transformation, which includes, first and foremost, rule of law and good governance. And for Ukrainian people, not just the fact of joining the EU and NATO is important, but also having clear reforms which we need to implement on the way to EU and NATO integration is important. There was the social poll conducted by New Europe Center, which showed that about 75% of Ukrainians want EU integration done through complex reforms. So basically, we want reforms to be done. And out of these 75%, about 65% want anti-corruption reforms to be done on the way to EU integration. So this is important indication of the maturity of Ukrainian society, that we see that we need not just to win the war on the battlefield. We need to win the war in terms of democracy, in terms of reforms. And we already chosen what is our path. Our path is your Atlantic integration. And for us, and for many reform-oriented people in government, in parliament, and in civil society, this is the powerful leverage, which we are already using. When in June last year, EU decided to grant EU candidates status to Ukraine. It was a huge victory in reform battlefield, I would say. But these EU candidates, it was linked to seven recommendations which Ukrainian government had to implement for the next steps for the EU negotiations, EU accession negotiations. And many of these steps were already implemented. They were related to anti-corruption and rule of law. Particularly, the head of SAPO, Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Office, was appointed. The head of NABU was just recently appointed. It's National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine. We are finalizing the judicial reform, which is on the proper track. The reform of the constitutional court of Ukraine is on the way. Not everything was implemented, but important, usually painful reforms from government, were implemented despite the actual war and martial law which is happening in Ukraine. So this is the important indicator that despite the war, we are not turning into the chaos and absolutely country where security is number one priority and we forget about human rights, about democracy, and about rule of law. Actually, anti-corruption rule of law institutions are working in Ukraine. And this is happening despite there are still important things happening at the battlefield. Maria, perfect. The description that you just gave of the work that the government is doing while they are focused on winning the war on the battlefield, you just described other actions that they've taken that the government of Ukraine has taken on reform. And I'm glad you mentioned the anti-corruption work of the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. You've given a great description of how you can do both, how you have to do both on this thing. And we'll talk about that balance. Alexandra, can I ask you a similar question, again, from the human rights, civil rights aspect? Daria talked about the reform. Human rights are important components that have to be defended at all times. It's difficult when there is, as Daria just pointed out, martial law right now. So there are issues that call this question. And I'd love for you to both talk about what victory looks like, what winning looks like, but also how the focus on human rights, human liberties, democratic values, works with security questions right now in Ukraine. In order to respond what the victories look like, we have to respond what this war is about. And this war started not in February 2022, but in February 2014, when Ukraine obtained a chance for the quick democratic transformation after a collapse of the authoritarian regime due to a revolution of dignity. And in order to stop us on this way, Putin started this war of aggression, occupied Crimea, part of Lugansk and the Nets regions, and last year extended it to the large-scale invasion because Putin is afraid of the idea of freedom, which become closer to the Russian border. And this is very important to remember because victory for Ukraine in this regard, it's not just to repeal Russian troops out from Ukrainian territory, restore international order, state sovereignty, and the occupied Crimea and other part of Ukrainian territories. But victory for Ukraine, it means to succeed on a way of democratic transition of our country. And we have to win this value dimension of this war as well. And that is why it's very important to remember all this time that we are fighting for freedom and democratic choice. Just for a chance to live and to build our country where the rights of everybody are protected, government is accountable, judiciary is independent, and police do not beat students who are peacefully demonstrated on Maidan Square.  We have no luxury to concentrate it only on defense from Russian aggression. We have to do parallel this democratic transition, which is extremely difficult during the large-scale invasion but which is necessity for us as a first state, candidacy to EU. I will stop there, thank you. Sandra, very good point. You've both made the point about the EU, accession to the European Union. And Dara, you described the seven tasks that the EU has laid in front of Ukraine and you described how progress has been made. The Ukrainian government has made progress on several of those tasks, there's more to do. And Alexandra, thank you for the emphasis on these values that have to be maintained even while, as you both have pointed out, you win on the battlefield with support from us. Speaking of support from us and speaking of the European Union and Europe, Admiral, we would love to get your thoughts on this question, on this question of kind of the security and the values, democratic values Sweden demonstrates and has implemented. I'd also be interested in how Swedes have thought about this question in the last year. Something has happened in the last year that has made some changes in Swedish thinking about security and values. You've got some ideas on that and there could be advice. Again, what we're trying to do is get from this discussion today advice for the Ukrainian government as it moves forward, your thoughts. Okay, thank you, Ambassador. If I may, I would like to take you now on a journey. Please. Historical journey, Swedish history lesson on the development of Swedish total defense concept that we had during the Cold War until what we have today now with the war in Ukraine. If we start by in the Cold War, the Swedish society, it was organized, it was legislated to support the armed forces in the event of war or imminent threat of war. That was the total defense concept. It was all about preparedness. I would say that Sweden was arguably one of the most militarized countries in Western Europe. The total defense concept, it was systematic. It was well developed over the whole period of the Cold War. We had the defense budget of 4% of GDP. We had 800,000 people in the wartime organization. We had immense stockpiling of everything that we needed, goods like ammunition, food, drugs, medical equipment, oil and gasoline, things like that, to make sure that we should have endurance if we were cut off in the event of war, or something like that. So there was immense stockpiling. We had also, we had it, and we still have it, what's called total defense duty. That means that everybody between 16 and 70 were obliged to be called up to assist either in the military defense or the civilian defense. And that's still the regulation in Sweden. So everybody is part of that. So the term total defense, basically denoted all activities. It was compromise both military, of course, and civil defense. It involved all the governmental agencies. It included regions, communities, private companies. The whole industry was supposed to be able to sort of war foot, and also down to the individuals. But what it did, it created cohesion. It created coherence in society, because everybody was part of the total defense concept. But then, of course, the Soviet Union fell, war support fell, and the total defense concept was basically scrapped, and there was no enemy anymore. During this time of eternal peace, it was more about how the armed forces could support the civil society and vice versa. So the military capabilities were used to assist civil society in extreme weather, like flooding or looking for missing people and things like that. It was not anymore about how the civil society could support armed forces. Stockpiling went away. We went into just-in-time economy, vulnerable to disruption, of course, because we had this just-in-time economy. Electronic communications were not set up anymore to operate in more like conditions, so this was sort of in the era of eternal peace. But of course, the annexation of Crimea in 2014 had changed at all. So if you read the Swedish defense bill from 2015, it talks again about the stronger defense. It talks about the total defense concept again, that we need to get back to the total defense concept. This was, of course, reinforced in the defense bill from 2020, even more, more defense spending, more focus on total defense. We need to get back to a good total defense concept. And of course, the brutal invasion of Ukraine in February 22, this also accelerated this process and put in more of a sense of urgency in the Swedish society. So if we compare this, what we call the new Swedish total defense concept with the old one that one we had during the Cold War, I think this is still about, of course, creating coherence. It's still as a whole of a society approach. That's nothing different to that. But maybe it's now more about resilience than preparedness, more about creating resilience in society than the previous total defense concept. And in my call, the society has to be resilient and prepared not only for full-fledged war, as we did during the Cold War, because the threat is different now. There's no sharp boundaries between peace, crisis, and war. The threat is multifaceted. You've got sub-crashhold, hybrid threats like cyber attacks, influence operations, sabotage, terrorism, espionage, including industrial espionage. So it's another threat today. So we need to make sure that there's resilience against these kinds of threats, the sort of sub-crashholds, hybrid threats in society. So there have been taken some steps in that. Of course, information security, cyber security is important. So we have established a common cyber security center with several agencies and authorities are involved in this one that was created a year ago. For the cyber security, but it's also psychological defense, which has to be adopted to today's condition and contributes to safeguarding of free exchange of knowledge, information within an open society. So we also created a re-established exit, because we had that feature also during the Cold War, an agency for psychological defense. But lastly, I would say that the Swedish total defense concept is not only about defending territory, defending borders. It's also defending and protecting the values that form our society. We must be able to defend and protect human rights, freedom of speech, democracy. That's also part of the total defense concept. And once again, it's all about creating coherence, cohesion in society. Nothing can stop there. Admiral, let me just ask you to elaborate a little on that last point, which is how total defense encompasses both the security threats. As you've mentioned, since last February, the threat has been evident. And Sweden has made some big changes in its policy toward NATO and neutrality more broadly. Talk a little bit more about Sweden and more broadly European attitudes and examples, lessons for the Ukrainians in terms of squaring that circle, having both the hard security that is needed to be there, the hybrid security on the cyber, for example, as well as the values that Sweden and Europe are protecting. If I may start by correcting you. Please. We were neutral until we joined the European Union, then became military and non-aligned. Very good. Very good. So we haven't been new all the time. Thank you. Coming to your question there, as I said, it's about cohesion, it's about coherence, but it's also about keeping the democratic institutions. If you have a well-established democratic, if you have free elections, you have freedom of speech, you have a free media, you have independent courts, that is the sort of foundation where you can build your total defense concept. That's all the framework for a total defense concept. Excellent. Thank you, sir. Of course I meant NATO. Sorry. Sorry. No, I'm glad you pointed this out. That's something I always have to point out. No, no, no. That's very good. Marta, so we've gotten the kind of European view of this question, the question of both the security and democratic values. You've studied these issues around the world, from your research, from the work at Rand. What advice do you have for the Ukrainians? Yeah, so let me start with some of the, you know, I've specifically looked at the Baltic states in the Nordic region. So, and we already just had a really good introduction on what total defense is. Total defense. But really from lessons from the Baltic states, for example, we talk more about comprehensive whole societal defense or approach to defense. And I think that is probably a very relevant aspect to unpack for Ukraine. So although Baltic states, there are differences among the Baltic states, but I will generalize. In the 90s, they were looking towards the examples of non-aligned countries like Sweden. So, you know, looking at sort of more total defense aspects and how to build their defense in general. But now, and the thinking didn't change in 2014. It changed earlier. You know, the cyber attacks in Estonia, Russia-Georgia war, those were already sort of indicators for the Baltic states that they need to think more about the resilience aspects. The resilience aspects of critical infrastructure, the resilience of national resources, national reserves, food, fuel, et cetera, but also the human factor, the human aspect and the trust that you have between the society and the government. In addition to that, aspects such as we heard about, fighting corruption, those aspects and establishing legislation that supports democracy and democratic governance have already been part of the reform processes in the Baltic states since their regained independence in 1991. So it has been a long, long working process that didn't really start at once, a simple point. But having said that, I think there are several aspects that I wanted to highlight from the kind of work that the Baltic states have been doing. One is the emphasis and the emphasis on identifying and being very clear on the chain of command, the civilian chain of command, but also the military chain of command. That is important during wartime. So having a clear division between who are the non-fighting population, who are the fighting population, but also for the time when you do enter a transition process. So you can have a threshold, a clear line between the military, the defense part of the state, the security part of the state, and also the civilian management of the rest of the state as well. The other part is the engagement with civilians. And here I mean individuals, groups of individuals, non-governmental organizations, but also private companies. All three Baltic states have been working on it from educational efforts that range from simply raising awareness of what defense is, or raising awareness of how their own country works. So civic education type of events. All the way to engaging with civilians in terms of supporting their defense and also security systems. Then working on establishing trust between the society and government. I think it's relevant for all democratic countries. But that is also an important aspect, I think, especially during reform processes. And Baltic states provide lessons in terms of good, but also probably some things that have not been working as many countries. So those are a couple of things that I wanted to mention. And the last one probably, and very importantly, is also how to fight disinformation and how to work in this complicated information environment that we are in today while maintaining a democratic country. And that is also something where the Baltic states have been continuously working on through their educational programs, but also through trying to maintain information and fighting the disinformation aspects from Russia specifically. So a couple of areas, I guess, that could be relevant for Ukraine as it enters transition process. Marta, very useful, very useful. I'm going to ask Jorgen in 30 seconds. But before I do, Jorgen, Daria and Alexandra, after Jorgen has a couple of comments, I would be interested in both of your questions for the admiral, for Marta, the admiral in the Swedish experience or the EU experience more broadly, for Marta in terms of the Baltic experience, and whatever Jorgen has to offer as well. But if you will be thinking about, again, the purpose here is to give any advice based on other experiences to Ukraine on how to manage this transition from the victory to a democratic society. And so I will turn to you all both for some questions after I asked Jorgen Andrews this question. So Jorgen, you've been in the State Department as a diplomat, as been here helping us think through these issues. And I know you've got some thoughts. We've already talked about some thoughts about the balance between the security and the values, the democratic values. You pointed out that it's not tension. It's not tension between them. These are consistent. These are reinforcing aspects of a society, of a government and relations to its people. So how should Ukraine think about this balance? And what can we do to help that along? Thank you very much, Bill. It's a pleasure to be here. Before offering some comments, I just need to give the usual disclaimer that I'm here in my US Institute of Peace. And nothing I say reflects the policy of the State Department or the US government. We're very glad to have you. There we go, legal disclaimer. I think what we're talking about here is, once Ukraine has won the war, how does it win the peace? And tying together comments made by, I think, all four of the prior speakers, Ukraine, I think, has an opportunity to kill three birds with one stone, as we say here. So as Ukraine thinks about how it comes out of the war, as it thinks about the institutional arrangements it wants to create, it has a chance to, as Daria says, complete the reforms, because it already had a very robust reform program underway before this latest invasion by Russia. And it has a chance to do that in a way that lines up its institutions and prepares the way legally and institutionally for EU accession. And then third, if Ukraine chooses to adopt some sort of a total defense model, it can build that into these institutional arrangements here. And so if there's a tension, the tension is to ensure that whatever the total defense or comprehensive security model, if Ukraine goes that direction, that that doesn't somehow contradict some of the reforms and some of the institutional arrangements required in EU accession. And so if we're talking about gratuitous advice that Ukraine has not asked me for, I would say, first, follow the EU a key. The chapters in the key lay out the basic institutional requirements, which, of course, reflect the values that's already been discussed. It kind of enshrines notions of rule of law and democracy and the civil rights and freedoms. And a key way in which democratic societies do that is they keep very separate and distinct. As the admiral said, they keep their military authorities and roles and responsibilities distinct from their civilian justice law enforcement roles and responsibilities and institutions. And in almost every society, as I wear my former reform and assistance implement or provider hat, looking across societies, almost every society has some institution that has a blended responsibility. So for instance, in the United States, it's the Coast Guard. They have both military authorities and civilian law enforcement authorities. So that's not entirely uncommon, but I think for the EU accession purposes and for Ukraine's own winning the peace agenda, keeping those kinds of blended authorities to a minimum is probably a good idea. It makes it easier to keep civilian justice processes, shall we say, untainted by military national security responsibilities, so that information that is collected can be used in a court of law to reach prosecutions. And so this has implications not just for the institutions, but also for intelligence streams. The national security intelligence stream is generating certain kinds of information that are useful for defense of the nation. But if those intelligence streams get mixed with civilian law enforcement intelligence, then it can compromise the ability to find prosecutions, which of course could be important, especially with the prosecution of war criminals and other atrocities. I think another piece of gratuitative advice would be to urge Ukraine not to create new institutions if it adopts a total defense model. Standing up new institutions is hard under any circumstances. I say this as a point of pain. I have scars trying to do that in various countries. It consumes a lot of resources and time, and it distracts from a lot of the other good reform efforts that Dari and others have pointed out are still underway. And so if whatever system Ukraine decides to adopt after the war as its mode of defense, it's really good to not have to stand up something new. I think the last thing I'll say is the admiral was very correct to point out that the kinds of threats that Ukraine faces in the 21st century that we all face are different. The boundary lines between national security threats and internal threats are different. And so certainly there will be need for information sharing and cooperation between the civilian and the military justice and law enforcement authorities to fully protect the nation. But to the extent possible, there needs to be very clear rules about the handoff of information and roles and responsibilities so that you don't have this blurring of who's responsible for that civilian justice and security piece. I think keeping that piece separate and keeping the military focused mostly on external threats, but supporting domestic law enforcement, I think those are some of the key takeaways from some of the other experiences we've seen in total defense. Jorgen, thank you. So Dari, Alexander, I'm going to come to you in one sec. Let me just put a pin in two things Jorgen and Yuna said that we're going to come back to. One is this keeping separate of the civil and military kinds of issues. Mara talked about chain of command. Of course, the chain of command goes all the way up. There is one person in charge. In Ukraine, we know President Zelensky that has both. But then your point about keeping separate, I want to come back to you because I'm interested in how comprehensive defense handles this. And you hinted at this right at the end, Jorgen, to the extent possible, I think you said. But I'd like to explore that a little bit, Admiral, with you. But I want to give Dari and Alexander an opportunity to ask questions, make comments on any of what you've just heard, but also to ask how does the Swedish model or the European model or some of Jorgen's suggestions, how does it fit in with the political realities of Ukraine today and tomorrow after the victory? Dari, do you want to go first? Sure. It's hard for me to compare the station in Ukraine now and our transition from war to peace with what has happened during the Cold War in Baltic states and Sweden. First of all, because the war is still ongoing. And it's the largest military conflict Europe is facing since World War II. It means that we have about a million of people who are fighting this war, either in the National Guard or in the Army or in other security forces. It also means that many people are mobilized, many people are wounded, thousands, if not tens of thousands of people are wounded. And we will have to deal with veterans after they will return for war. So how to deal with them? They have to be integrated to society and they have to be part of efforts on rebuilding Ukraine. Also, regarding EU and NATO integration, I would want to emphasize that for Ukraine, it's already decided. Sorry, it's a lot of sun in Kiev now, so I will move a bit. So in Ukraine, it's already decided. We want to enter NATO. And for us, entering NATO is part of the security guarantees that the new war from Russia will not happen again. We already had 2014-2015, where Minsk agreement started and was negotiated and this Minsk agreement were basically the factor winning time for Russia to prepare for the next phase of large-scale aggression. So our focus now is to prevent Minsk III, where we will be led to the new large-scale aggression. And I have a 10-year-old son. I don't want him in eight years to be fighting this war in the trenches. I want to make sure that we are members of NATO and there are security guarantees for Ukraine. And membership towards NATO for us means also reforms of entire security sector, reforms of the Ministry of Defense, reform of the army. Now we have the largest army in Europe which has expertise and experience in fighting the real war. We have to take this experience, build proper NATO standard management systems into the army, into the Ministry of Defense, how we are, let's say, deciding what we buy, how we buy, how we manage our troops. So all that is important part of transformation which Ukrainian society needs, but also which Ukraine needs in order to enter NATO. So it's clear for us. We understand that the threat of Russia will not disappear. Simply because Russia will not disappear and we are sharing the longest border with Russia and Russia is absorbing slowly Belarus. So very soon it seems to be that Russia will be also in the northern border of Ukraine in Belarus. What I think and it's interesting for me to learn more in Baltic states is that their way of building their security after in 1990s was starting from history and from justice, where they had to ensure that if you speak Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian, if you know Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian history, then you can be granted the citizenship. Unfortunately, when Ukraine didn't do that and it led to significant problems and I think that this historical reconciliation and returning our historical memory will have to be done in Ukraine as part of dealing with society after the war will be won. So I think these are key my comments as of now. Very helpful, very helpful. So Marta on that last question on the Baltic experience I think would be useful if you have a thought on that in a moment. And Admiral, on the NATO accession, you've given some thought to NATO accession. You may have some advice for Daria and Ukraine more broadly about that. Jordan, I know you've given some thought to this NATO accession as well, but hold on to those. We'll come back to Daria's good questions. Oh, Gendry, same question. You've heard Marta on the Baltic experience, the Admiral on the Swedish experience, Jordan's thoughts on transitions and some advice, gratuitous or not, good advice. Any thoughts or questions for them that you would like to pose at this point before we come back to Daria's questions? I would like to return to the question of balance between security and civil liberties. And I have one comment and one question. When we speak about security, we speak about at least two-dimension. When we speak about state level and the current situation, the large scale Russian aggression resulted in martial law and a lot of democratic institution were limited because of the security requirements. And our task as a human rights defenders is to be aware that all this limitation have been done proportionally. But when we speak about these restrictions, we speak about two types, the restriction which is based directly on law. For example, during martial law, it's prohibited to conduct elections and it's very understandable that freedom of movement is prohibited. And these types of restriction will immediately consult when the war will finish and Ukraine will win. But there are second types of restrictions which is based on practice or different kinds of decisions on level of government or level of local authorities. And this is a separate very difficult question when in post-war Ukraine to analyze and assess their proportionality and to cancel this restriction which will not be this drone automatically. So we will have to return and to find another balance between security and civil liberties in post-war Ukraine. And this is a huge task to do. And when we speak about international level on security, international dimension, and this is my question is about because now the discussion is connected with military bloc and I am as a human rights defender want to bring to put the question a slightly different how we people who live in 21th century will defend people. I mean, do we have, do we can to rely upon the rule of law or our security and human rights guarantees will be dependent only on whether or not we are living in a country with a strong military potential or our country is belong to some powerful military bloc. And this is a question which worried me because when we speak about security on international level it's not just about military blocs. It's about international system of peace and security who must effectively protected people against authoritarianism and the worse. And now the example of Ukraine showed that the whole UN system couldn't stop Russian atrocities. And this is not a norm. So my question is will we able to start a cardinal reform of international system of peace and security on international level, on regional level or like the further development of humankind it will be to produce more weapons to make our country more strong in military potential and to create a powerful military blocs. Thank you. Alexandra, great question. Glad you raised this whole question of an international rule of law, an international order that prevailed that was in place from the end of World War II until 2014. And that order was destroyed or at least tattered by, attacked by, threatened by the Russians and their invasion. And your question is a great one. Is it possible to restore that order? Is it possible to revert to an international rule of law as you put it that would ensure not just Ukraine security and deep, not just European security but certainly US security, international security, global security in some rule of law, some international order where sovereignty is respected, where territorial integrity is respected? That's a good, or, and you asked this question, it's the right question, or is it gonna depend on is your security, Ukraine security and by implication other nations on having a strong military or a strong military defensive bloc alliance? Or both, I'd love to come back and all three of our panelists will have thoughts on that. So we got several good questions here from Daria and Alexander. One is on NATO security guarantee. Admiral, you've got some thoughts on that. No Munich three. I think this is important, Daria. That's a very, very good point. And then she also had questions about the Baltic States. So why don't we do that? So NATO accession membership thoughts for Ukraine. Admiral, you're probably in the best position to do that. And then the Baltic question, they will come back to Alexander's two good questions. And I know Jordan's got some thoughts on that, good. Admiral, you wanna go first on NATO accession? Okay, yeah, I must say that I would abstain of giving any recommendation when it comes to NATO accession. We're still in the normal accession process. You'll be there. Yeah, eventually we'll be there, hopefully, yes. And each and every process is different. I mean, our process, the Swedish and Finnish process is different from the North Macedonian one. And now even the Finnish and Swedish processes are different, unfortunately. But I can't give any recommendation. What I could say is from a military standpoint, okay, you've got the political accession process. That's one thing. But you also have the military integration process. That's parallel to that one. And it's very important, and if you wanna shorten the accession and integration process, make sure that your military integration is prepared as much as possible. That's what we learned, our lessons now, from being a partner to NATO from 1994, that our interability was so high that the military integration process was very swift and smooth. Now I think I'll leave the political accession. So just what Darya points out, rightly, that after the victory, Ukraine will have the largest and maybe the most respected army on the continent. And NATO might do well to have Ukraine as a... In this scenario, after the victory, Ukraine will have defeated Russia, which is one of the, is clearly the main threat that NATO addresses, is designed to address. And so, by this time, Sweden and Finland, after the victory, Sweden and Finland will be members. And what will be the argument in your view, putting yourself now as a member of NATO? And Ukraine applies again. And Darya has mentioned that this is a clear direction for Ukrainian people as well as the constitution, for that matter. What do you anticipate? What's your guess about the response of NATO to Ukraine's membership request? Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you again. I don't think I should speak on behalf of NATO. Okay, okay. Maybe I'll ask Jordan to answer that. Marta, Baltic examples that Darya asked about it. Yeah, I think great remarks on the applicability or maybe not applicability of the Baltic states examples. I think that, you know, what we're looking at, so early 90s, Baltic states is really a transition from very long-term occupation at the end of which you have more of a civilian unarmed resistance rather than armed active resistance, right, to peace, to peacetime. We're talking about Ukraine, which will be a transition from wartime to peacetime. So already qualitatively different situations. At the same time, also Baltic states essentially, especially its defense sector reform were started from zero. It was building from zero rather than rebuilding something or changing the way things are done. So yes, there are differences. What can be a one-to-one comparison? I don't even know because I think that every case life presents us with new and new cases and new and different environments, different situations. So we can't really have a one-to-one comparison. At the same time, the reform processes to the Baltic states and also other countries in the northeastern or eastern Europe went through during the 90s, but it didn't stop there. Reform process, sort of democratic reform process, defense and security reform process, it takes a long time to do. So those reforms have been taking place. All these more than 30 years, right? Of course, NATO in the early 2000s sort of accelerated, gave them a purpose, gave them specific ways and requirements, but really it has been a continuous process. And I think that's one of the lessons even if it's a sort of obvious lesson. The aspect about the citizenship requirements, which I sort of put in a broader question of, integration of Russian speakers, integration of other ethnic minorities, it is yet another question. So yes, Baltic states put this requirement of if you have to, you know, there's a test that you have to pass, whether you're an American or a Russian or someone else who wants to become a Baltic citizen. It's the same test of history, language and things like that. So yes, indeed, that is there at the same time as we know both Latvians do have quite a big number of non-citizens who have chosen not to take the test. They do live in the country. It means that they're not citizens. They don't participate in elections. But I think that's sort of the citizenship requirement is only one aspect of, one small, quite small aspect of working with, of how to work and how to include all of your society into an sort of inclusive governance and inclusive democracy process. So, and again, work in the Baltics is still continuing on that as they're working on their comprehensive defense and security aspects too. And then I think some of the points that our speakers from Ukraine mentioned made me think about really the deterrent value of resilience. So that is something that as a defense analyst, trying to look at it, but do we have actually not measured? We don't have a quantitative way of measuring what is the deterrent value of good resilience preparation? But we can conclude that there are political aspects, economic aspects, societal aspects, very important in addition to the military capabilities that could increase the deterrent value of the deterrent value of a resilient preparation. So avoid another invasion, avoid not only military invasion, but also use of gray zone activities against your state. So I think, and I know I'm sort of beating my own drum because I do work on resilience, but I think that resilience work, even irrespective to, let's say, resilience, essentially resilience, say, within NATO, NATO acknowledges the importance of resilience, but it is still a national responsibility. So that is an important part of work that Ukraine would need to do. And it's NATO aspirations, also EU aspirations. But I think it also has this potential deterrent value in the future as well. I'm sure it has a deterrent value. And I'm also sure that the example of the Ukrainians, resilience, I mean, this is a definition of a year of resilience. Actually, may I add one thing? So we talk about the examples of Nordic countries and Baltic countries and what they have done that could be good examples for comprehensive whole societal approach. Actually, Ukraine over the last year itself serves as a really interesting example from the point of view of how the society, how looked at, how civilians have come together and really work towards supporting their emergency services. For example, that is only part of the resilience questions that I'm talking about here. It's a very good point. We're learning. We're all learning from the Ukrainians on resilience, on determination, on coherence as well. Thank you. So, Jordan, big question. Two big questions from Alexander. One is the balance that you talked about and she raised again. In particular, there's martial law right now in Ukraine. At some point, after the victory, that martial law will be lifted and then there will be elections. And then there will be the constraints, the restrictions on movement in and out of the country will be lifted. That transition is what we're really talking about here, there. And it is a balance. It is a balance now and then after the victory. But the second big question is on international order. And Alexander asked the right question. Can we count on an international rule of law, an international order that respects sovereignty and territorial integrity to guarantee or assure, but hopefully guarantee not just Ukrainian security, but others as well or worldwide. We had that for a while and it's now threatened, it's now gone. Or is Ukrainian security going to be only through NATO, only through defensive alliance, only through building up the military capability to deter and defend if necessary? Both of those questions, you get to go. So, super quickly, as someone who had the privilege of working on NATO and Ukraine issues shortly after the Orange Revolution, I have been a fan of Ukraine and NATO for many, many years. And I think Russia's most recent invasion of Ukraine is prompting rethinking and should prompt rethinking on a number of levels and a number of places. One is that NATO itself, I agree with Kissinger that the center of gravity of Europe has shifted east. And Ukraine has an excellent argument coming out of this war that it has essentially defended Europe. It has defended NATO. It has reduced the capability of NATO's primary adversary and has earned that NATO membership through its own sacrifice. And so I think there'll be a really good argument to be made there. I think NATO, again, personal views here. But I think NATO in the 20-plus years following the breakup of the Soviet Union, I think NATO had the luxury of viewing expansion as more of a political question. And I think this war in Ukraine will shift that debate and NATO will look at it slightly differently as a practical, real military collective security issue. And in that space, I think Ukraine has a beautiful argument to make. On Alexander's question, as you address Alexander's question, next will be an opportunity for people in this room to ask questions and people online to ask questions. So be prepared. So on Alexander's question, I mean, she's putting her finger on the exact question that is nagging everybody who works in international law and foreign relations. I think this war points out an inherent issue inside the international legal architecture. The institutions that were created after World War II, specifically the UN system, but there are others, were designed to manage, prevent, eliminate, or reduce the size of conflicts, mostly among mid-size and smaller states. But the fact that that system is based on the sovereignty of nation states, that the highest level of sovereignty is at the nation state level, the system inherently had no way to prevent one of the bigger, stronger states from essentially acting against the rules. And so Alexander points out that that's the weakness here. And so what the international system has traditionally done when big states go outside the rules and impose their will on smaller states is we band everybody together. Sometimes we do it in formal alliances like NATO. Sometimes we do it in coalitions of the willing. Right now, we're doing it by arming Ukraine and supporting Ukraine's financial stability and humanitarian needs. But I suspect coming out of this, there will be a combination of things that making sure Ukraine is well armed to defend itself will be part of the mix. But also figuring out what institutional arrangements need to be made, either in Europe or broader. And of course, I hope getting Ukraine on a track for NATO membership sooner rather than later. But there are a number of ways that states group together to deter or react to the infringements on the international system of the larger state. Last point, just picking up on what Darius said about reintegrating all these fighters, there's a watch out for here. And I say this based on the United States' own painful lessons learned in history. But when you have a lot of military combatants coming back and being reintegrated into society, one of the logical or natural places for them to find work is as police, as civilian law enforcement. And from our own experience, we have seen that the training and the rules of engagement for soldiers are very different than the training needed and the rules of engagement for law enforcement dealing with situations with their own citizens, their own fellow citizens. And so it can be very tough to retrain someone who's used to the military rules and the engagement rules to step into that civilian law enforcement role. And that's just a challenge that I think Ukraine will figure out and overcome. And hopefully the United States and others can be helpful as they try to do that. Thank you for both. Thank you for both. OK, questions from people in this room for these three, but also for Daria and Alexander on the screen. You want to be sure we get those? Mike. And there is a Mike coming here. You can tell it's Mike behind that mask. He's really there. Yes, there you go. Do you want to take it off? Please. We can hear you better. Mike Jayjee is formerly of USIP and currently completing a study on intelligence reform in conflict-affected states. And it's very perceptive of USIP to identify this as a woefully underdeveloped aspect of security sector reform. Everybody says you've got to do it, but we don't know how. So we have some thoughts on this subject. But the takeaway I get from this discussion is that we, the US, need to be prepared for doing security sector reform in Ukraine. So get ready. My question is, with regard to intelligence reform, what are the challenges that we would be confronting for Daria and Alexander? What are the challenges that we should be prepared to deal with in terms of intelligence reform? So Daria, Alexander, I'm not sure you've got answers on intelligence reform, but you might. And, Admiral, you may have some thoughts on this one, maybe any others. But let me first, as Mike has directed it to Daria and Alexander, any thoughts on lessons that we take out of this war on intelligence reform?  Well, we actually have been working on the SBU, its state intelligence agency of Ukraine, SBU reform for quite long before large-scale invasion. And unfortunately, reform was not performed properly. But we were reliant a lot on the NATO leverage to say that, listen, we have to transform our intelligence agency. We have to cut the functions which are not natural for the intelligence agency, like investigating economic crimes and doing some other stuff, which was in our intelligence agency most of the corrupt stuff which happened there. And we have to focus on preventing war. And we have to focus on our intelligence service preventing various security threats. So this slow process was happening, but we didn't finish it, unfortunately, before the large-scale invasion. And therefore, it's one of the reasons why our intelligence service also didn't perform properly before the large-scale invasion and during the large-scale invasion. We have amazing service men and women in intelligence agency of Ukraine. But unfortunately, not all of them are. And many people who are still working there, they have to be cleaned up.  And it's still in the way. And I want to emphasize once again that support of Ukrainian people, it's not only about constitution. That public support of society towards NATO integration is growing exponentially in Ukraine. So every month, the numbers in sociology are growing. It's, I don't know, probably it will be soon like 100% of support, probably 99% of support. So it means that people, our Ukrainian society is ready to question Ukrainian officials on whether they've done enough for the NATO integration. And if NATO will say, listen, in order for the EU integration, your intelligence service must be reformed in a way to cut all these non-natural functions as it is in the NATO member states, then Ukrainian society gets the powerful argument to push for these reforms. It's just a response what to do next in terms of the intelligence reforms. And it's all linkage towards the NATO integration. Darya, very, very powerful, very powerful statement about the demand from Ukrainians for reform, including intelligence reform, in order to get into NATO. Very, Alexander, anything to add? I will start with a personal story, how the large-scale invasion started for me. In 24th of February, someone called to my door, approximately at 4 o'clock in the morning. And my first thought was that its security service came to search my house because I, for several years, worked on reform of security service and become very annoyed in different visions. How this... We have different visions with security service how this reform has to be done. And our vision as a human rights defender was that we have to transfer the Soviet inheritance state bodies, which can be used as a tool against opposition in civil society, to effective state body, which can effectively identify and work with external threats. And we faced with three main challenges before large-scale invasion started in this reform process. First, to convince that this reform has to be done because we was always told that security service has to be untouchable during the war because it's very difficult to reform the state security service when you are in war. Second, we try to work on the legislative level to deprive security service from the KGB functions, which un-proportionally limits human rights and freedoms and which can be used with another goals for which security service aimed to work. And third is to ingrain in security service reform the human rights guarantees, like not just a motto that security service has to respect human rights, but concrete procedures, concrete norms, which can prevent from human rights violations or provide possibility to restore related rights of people. And I would like to end this comment that the person from audience who asked this question was told that he become aware that United States of America have to help Ukraine with security service reform after the war, if I quote rightly. But I do believe that we have to start it now. We have not to wait when the war will end because if we want to win this war more quickly, we have to have effective intelligence. Thank you. Alexander, a very good point about starting now. And Daria made the point that the support for SBU reform, for NATO accession continues to go up. She said 99% to 100%. Now's the time to take advantage of that to make these hard reforms. And both of you pointed out, again, when I was there, we were talking about SBU reform. And it still is necessary. So you're exactly right. Now's the time to do this. And Admiral? If I may, talking about the issue of distinction between law enforcement and military, you picking up on what you said, blending authority, task information between law enforcement and military. I think that's also what we discussed earlier here. If I may have another history lesson, an example from Sweden. Excellent. That's why you're here. Now we'll start in 1931 instead, right before the Cold War. And that is because we had in Sweden an event that's called all-dollar shootings, when the police called in military troops during a protest of labor union protest. And several people got killed by military troops. And since then, we had, by law, a clear distinction between what would be law enforcement tasks, authority and information, and what would be military task authority information. External threat, internal threat. Very clear distinction there between. But now with this new, much blurry, multifaceted threat, hybrid threat, we realize that we can't have that clear distinction anymore when it comes to information. Task authority, of course, but information. We need to have a better information sharing between law enforcement and military. And that has happened. And the important part here, I will say that this changes or improvement when it comes to information sharing is subject to parliamentary decisions, lawmaking, oversight. We even have independent courts and agencies that monitor and safeguard that is, that laws and regulations regarding information sharing is maintained. So there are instruments in place. And I think that's important because it's all about making sure that people, the population has trust in the governmental agency and the government that their personal freedom is not. Sort of demeaning this. Exactly, exactly. Thank you, sir. Jordan, quick comment? Just a quick tech on, so Daria and Alexander are exactly right that strong, healthy, accountable, transparent civilian institutions are kind of the solution for everything here, right? Because they help Ukraine win the peace coming out of the war. They help Ukraine set up for EU extension and NATO membership and all these other things. But they also close down the avenues by which Russia exploited Ukrainian society for so long, all the corruption angles and all of the weak institutions that allowed Russia and its various agents to affect Ukrainian policies and dynamics. And so those strong, healthy, accountable institutions, good governance is the solution to all problems here. And as Mara says, contributes to resilience. That's the resilience that we're looking at. Other questions in the room? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. And then, Dakey, you got one? Okay. So there's good discussion on. Your name, sir, is? Tim Connor. And there's good discussions on NATO membership application, should I say. And the reasons are very rational. However, we know that Russia's not gonna just sit by and watch the NATO debate on this issue. So my question is, do you anticipate some sort of Erdogan kind of thing within NATO? Perhaps by Russia giving certain incentives to NATO members to fight this particular entry? I would say surely they're going to try. And I would say further that they'll fail. That my bet is that there won't be an Erdogan kind of a problem. There will be a debate. There's undoubtedly going to be a debate. But again, Ukraine is gonna be a security contributor to NATO, I believe. And I think NATO will consolidate around there. But you're right, the Russians won't be happy. And when they have lost this war, they may have. But others will be smarter on this than I. Daria, Alexander, any thoughts on concerns about the Russian attitude toward NATO membership for Ukraine? Daria, go first. Well, for sure Russians will try their best to prevent that happening. But we should forget about Russian claims about their right to decide the future of Ukraine. And Ukrainian people showed that it is in the hands of Ukrainian people to decide the future of Ukraine. And for this right, we are ready to die and we are dying. Therefore, whatever Russia will do, we will walk towards NATO. And I'm pretty sure we will successfully enter NATO personally for myself. I'm giving the time limit of eight years because when my son is 18 years old, I want him to serve into the NATO army of Ukraine. But it hopefully happened much faster than in eight years. NATO army will welcome your son into this thing. Alexander, any thoughts on this? I really don't care about Russian feelings about independent choice of Ukrainian people to enter NATO. And it will be sooner or later. Good point, totally agree, Marta? Yeah, I think from my analytical point of view, I guess, we did expect much more Russian attempts of interference when Sweden and Finland applied. We didn't really have that. But so, and now for Ukraine, we're thinking about scenario of future when the war has ended. So the big question mark in my mind is also like, in what state is Russia going to be in terms of military state, economy, it's sort of political power? What is Russia going to look like afterward? That's a question that I have as well. But in the end, when it comes to NATO enlargement, it is really a question of what is the decision of NATO member states in the end? It's in the first instance of the decision for Ukraine and second instance for NATO to respond, exactly right. And the heart of the debate inside NATO when that time comes, and I hope it comes soon, the heart of the debate is, is NATO safer with Ukraine inside NATO or outside? And if it's outside, I would argue that that continues to create a challenge and an opportunity for a Putin or whoever succeeds him to continue to attack Ukraine, which doesn't help NATO's security. So I would hope that the debate when it comes will center on that question. And I'm pretty confident that NATO members would see that they are safer with Ukraine inside. Admiral, we won't ask you on the NATO question. No, no, but I can say something. No, no, go ahead, go ahead. No recommendations from NATO side. All right, all right. But I speak up what you said, because I mean, when we went down the path for NATO application for NATO membership, that was a huge change in Sweden's security policy. And then what talks in Sweden about how would Russia react to this? And I thought, how would Russia react? What's, and we have chosen this path, we've chosen to become members of NATO and we anticipated, as you said, more of hybrid activities, more of threats, things like that. We haven't really seen it yet. See what happens in the future, but we think we anticipate more reactions from the Russian side. And they've been occupied in Ukraine. And that confirms that this Russian attack on Ukraine is not about NATO. It's not about NATO. I think that's exactly right. Very good question, thank you, sir. All right, right here, yes, ma'am. Thank you very much, very quick question. My name is Anna Seneva. I have a civil society question. Okay. And it's primarily probably to Mr. Jordan, sorry I didn't catch the last name. Jordan Andrews. Yeah, Jordan Andrews. I just was wondering, from your experience, both USIP and State Department, what would you advise for civil society organizations to do when this is over? Because I think there will be no shortage of religious organizations and other civil society groups to come and help and restore the country and flood resources and volunteers there. But how would you best channel that? So I'm reluctant to speak when we have brilliant members of Ukrainian civil society with us. But I will say one thing, which is that one of the greatest strengths that Ukraine has had going for it for many years is the power of its civil society. It has such an active, incredible, dynamic civil society, investigative journalists, all kinds of things that unfortunately some of its other neighbors who came out of that Soviet Union experience haven't quite yet built up. And so I would hope and expect that Ukrainian civil society, even though it right now is very focused on helping Ukraine win this war, that even while doing that and certainly after the conflict that Ukrainian civil society would go back to being the very effective, very vocal critics of the government and also helping to shape the reforms that are needed. So civil society is one of the best things Ukraine has going for it. And I don't think they'll miss a beat once the war's over. They will go back to fulfilling that role of being a watchdog, helping the government through its reforms, but keeping an eye on things as well. And Jordan, you're exactly right, that Dari and Alexander represent that critical voice and will, thoughts on civil society first Dari and then Alexander, and drop. Again, number first. Next time, Alexander will respond first. Okay, okay. Actually, we're all gonna get one last round here and you'll be last, Dari, you'll be last. But go ahead on this side. Okay, okay, that's fine. The difference between Ukrainian civil society before February 24, 2022 and now is dramatic because what Jordan explained, Ukrainian civil society was strong for quite a long time, but we had quite a lot of civil society organizations, investigative journalists, but this was not all society. Now, everybody in Ukrainian society found its role, how to contribute to the victory efforts and how to be active and how to take responsibility for the future of the country. And this is the dramatic difference. It means that there is a huge grassroots network of initiatives which emerged after February 24. Somebody is fundraising for drones for the army. Somebody is helping wounded. Somebody is helping relocated people. Even doctors, they are mobilizing themselves into various initiatives. On the local self-government level, there are new leaders. So Ukrainian society significantly transformed within the last year. And to the certain extent, it underwent a lot of hurdles, but it became stronger. So how to help even now and after the, after the war is to build the horizontal networks with these emerged leaders, emerged civil society initiatives in various sectors, in advocacy sectors, in humanitarian sectors and in other sectors and help rebuild Ukraine on the horizontal levels. It could be school-to-school initiatives. It could be self-governance to self-governance initiatives, university-to-university initiatives. Ukrainian hospitals, American hospitals initiatives, religious-to-religious organizations. So I would really encourage to build these horizontal networks now, not wait until the victory, and then reinforce these networks after the victory. Thank you. Daria, Alexandra? Alexandra? When we speak about civil society, we speak about power of ordinary people. And we all witnessed how during the large-scale invasion when the international organization evacuated their personnel, ordinary people remained and start to do extra-ordinary things to defend the country, other freedom and democratic choice. And it became obvious that ordinary people who fight for freedom and democracy are more powerful than even the second army in the world. And that is why because ordinary people have a much more impact that they can even imagine. So now when we speak about fighting Russian aggression, I must admit that civil society in cooperation with state institutions do a lot to stop Russian aggression and to liberate Ukrainian territories and the people who live there. But Ukrainian civil society have a much more ambition. Last year, a Lugano manifest was presented in Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano. And this was a signal from Ukrainian civil society to international partners that we want to take a responsibility for democratic transformation of Ukraine, ourselves, so we don't want to transfer this responsibility just to Ukrainian politicians and state authorities. And I ask to take this signal seriously. I ask international partners to treat civil society of Ukraine as a equal partner on the level with state bodies and not just consult with us, but to involve us in all processes which connected with recovery and democratic transitions. I'm so glad you asked that question. That was a great one. And I see now that I'm a minute over. Are we, all right, so there are other questions here that I would love to get to. And probably our panelists will stick around for two minutes afterwards, but I'm glad to talk to anyone afterwards. Let me, instead of asking for summaries, let me just thank people for this. This has been a very rich discussion. Marla, Admiral, Jorgen, Daria, Alexandra, thank you very much for your time. Thank you for your questions. This conversation about transition from victory to post-victory, from victory to peace with democratic values, both during the fight and after the peace is an important one, which we will continue to work on. Thank you all very much for this opportunity in the context again of the Democracy Summit. This was a great contribution. So thank you all very much for doing this.


Hello everybody, I'm Evora, but we're standing on the outside of a VDC M2 staring at ESTA's last track Unfortunately, I missed ESTA last round due to a death in my family So we were unable to keep people were here in some VDC cars We're gonna try and get some VR tandems as you were standing in the outside of the M2 that we're gonna be riding And we're gonna go full send and see if we can't get some good runs in VR Try to acclimate myself back into VR so make sure you guys follow me on all social media Let's follow the description box below. Let's do it. All right, so we are inside. I'm gonna get my cable all the way So we are inside We're gonna get a practice run here See if we can't get this track down in this car without a tune So we go a fourth gear hit initiating in Outside clip kind of bring it in inside clip Transition oh a little bit of waiver there on the wall I brought that a little bit too wide Bring in the front clip and Solid on the exit. So first run on this track in VR. That was actually very impressive We're gonna spawn back to pets Like I said, I haven't been doing VR too much But I figured out how to get this to actually record correctly. So we are in full VR So we're gonna see if we can't Do another run like that So cool to look inside this car. I probably should turn that off. All right full send time. You don't have any way next to us No, all right Full send practice run Of course gear Truck it in Outer zone bring it into the inner zone inner clip kind of transition Kind of save my waiver a little bit. Listen to this bed It'll break into the wall I think we're deep inside that wall hard transition here Oh I kind of let that one go So we're all not too bad of runs Exactly there is somebody up there. So we might uh Give him a lead and then maybe we'll get a chance to chase transition in Uh-huh that wanted bring into that front clip out nice and wide Go break. Oh Kind of shallow in that zone towards the end. We got out there. Oh, we floated that car really wide into the dirt Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. He's right there though We thought that car really wide into the dirt But we managed to get a full pull that was uh A little bit of miscalculation through that final section It looks like we are gonna get a chance to chase Got left at the light there Oh, man. I have my smoke on full Yep blinded by the smoke. Oh, yep blinded by the smoke and came out of drift And we're in the wall. Yep Basing in vr. Definitely uh extremely hard when you're in full smoke. You can't really see what you're doing where you're going But that's how it would be in an actual car. So we're gonna try to do another chase run against another m2 Really far over really up there getting bathed in smoke through there And I kind of lost my bearing of course getting bathed in smoke and lost where I was on course I don't think you'd slow down did not expect him to slow down that much through that section Whoo did not expect that I'm gonna catch these guys go right by oh Nice hard flick by those two The vr is definitely uh very fun and well obviously immersive But uh takes a minute to get used to cut and do the smoke haven't been on vr in a minute So trying to get back into it for you guys hard flick in Pretty much a huge angle there the inner clip I think I might have the wrong gearing because that's a little shallow Handbrake it out to the wall Not wide. I don't know if he was there or not But we managed to get a full run I'm gonna try and get another chase here if we can We are gonna get a chase So we cannot get lost in the smoke Be slow now more than I expected I was hard on break there trying not to hit him Let's cut this to catch up. Yep Definitely uh A little slower than I expected probably was my fault though. I kind of probably surged in a little bit too far On him We're gonna try out. We're gonna get another chance to go full send We're gonna give him a bit of a Little bit of an entrance gap Very saucy entry There we go Now we're not fully bathed in the smoke and that was almost a clean run Slowly getting some clean runs almost fully clean, but not uh not the cleanest Jesus all right that guy was a little aggressive there Think we're gonna have another Supra coming up with us a 90 this guy was flicking pretty hard so let's see what we can do I cannot see where I'm going muscle memory is not good right there I totally got lost in the smoke with that one did not see where I was going I could not see a single thing with that run So we're gonna probably do one final lead run for this episode. Make sure you guys follow me on social media It looks like we're gonna do a chase sure Chase the other m2 Make sure you guys follow me on all social media on the description box below And as always I think you guys come back and watch it. I mean rabbit. I'll see you guys on the track and too much Definitely was not used to the angle. He was throwing so I'll see you guys in the next one


The study found that 45.4% of elderly patients admitted to a Norwegian University Hospital were at risk of malnutrition. This suggests that a significant number of the hospitalized elderly population require nutritional intervention. This article was offered by Helen K. Eyde, Jeff Altadbent, Jesse Sotland, and others.


Yeah. I was shy, man. So it wasn't a mentor. It was books. Also, I didn't have the resources to show you a picture of the room I used to. I grew up in. So this is when I was living on the north side of St. Louis. St. Louis is is home for me. St. Louis is the most, I think FBI statistics say it's the most dangerous city in the US. We literally lead the the nation in some of the worst categories, violent crimes and this and that. And I grew up on the north side of St. Louis, which is the worst part. I was lucky. I had both of my parents. Dad was a cop. Mom was a nurse and they were together next door drug dealers. I wake up going to porch. You see bullet casings on the porch. You hear gunshots in the middle of the night. You get used to it. Doesn't freak me out somehow. Sometimes I even find comfort in here and I'm kind of weird. Anyway, so this was my room. These are the books in my in my little messy, messy room. This is the window bed. So this is kind of like where I come from. So for the audience who's listening, it's bed, a window and stacks piles and piles of books. That's all you need. See, the books were the way out. Chris Rock made a joke. Love, Chris Rock. Chris Rock is edgy, man. Yeah, he is. He said, if you want to hide something from a black person, put it in a book. Funny joke. Yeah, you're trying not to laugh. I remember you. Bill Gates was interviewed by a reporter. They asked him, Bill, if you could have any superpower in the world, what would it be? Bill, he didn't say he wanted to be strong like the Hulk or fly like Superman or spin webs like Spider-Man. He said, if I can have any superpower, it would be to read books faster. Or in Buffett said, the more you learn, the more you earn. Books are everything to me. That's such a simple investment, but it can change everything. Every problem that you're dealing with in life, somebody else has gone through that problem, transcended it and wrote a book about it. The books are the cheat code. So for me, it was picking up books about how to be happy because I knew first in order for my life to get better, I had to get better. One of those books that had a huge impact on me. It is the second most translated book in the world, second to the Bible. Some say it's the wisest book ever written. It's called the Dao De Ching book of the way, Lao Zhu. Amazing book, it's poetry. This is probably why I had a connection to it, right? Being a rap and coming into poetry, but it was books. You know, I didn't I didn't have the mentors. So it was the literature for me spending my last my last money on it was studio time and then books, all the money I had in my account because I knew it was an investment. I don't know. I grew up different also for my brothers. I got two older brothers. I don't know, man, I was I was always like, there's nothing I can't do if I really want to do it. And I never had limitations maybe growing up. I felt like if I if I put my mind to it, I could be the best rapper in the world. I could be this, I could be that. If that's something I really wanted to do, I could nothing would a Will Smith say I could be president if I wanted to. I felt that when he said that years ago, because I feel the same way, I mean, there's nothing you can't do because it's been done by people probably with worse circumstances than you have. So long story short, I think books were definitely my portal into changing my life.