Ukraine War Panel with the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

On April 9, 2025, Kissinger Center Director Francis J. Gavin and Professor Sergey Radchenko appeared on a panel about the prospects for the Ukraine War held at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.

They joined the Munk School’s founding director, Janice Stein, and Iain Martin, Director of Engelsberg Ideas and the London Defence Conference. Also on the panel were scholar-practitioners Prof. John Bew, Director of the Centre for Grand Strategy at King’s College London’s War Studies Department, who recently served as foreign policy advisor to four British Prime Ministers; and Dr. Colin Kahl, Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spoogli Institute, formerly the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy at the U.S. Department of Defense.

The panelists shared their analysis of the war, prompted by the publication of Adam Entous’s long-form article in the New York Times, “The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine” which delved into the blow-by-blow of Western intelligence sharing and the nail-biting moments in the first weeks of the war, when the fall of Kyiv seemed imminent.

They also debated the question of “Peak West”—that is, a maximum moment of cohesion among the United States and its European allies circa 2022 in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion. The panel agreed that such a moment has now passed. They also found common ground on the value of Prof. Gavin’s emphasis on “contemporary history” to capture the contingency, fluidity, and messiness of the course of conflict—future historians will know the outcome of the Ukraine War and shape their analysis accordingly. We who are currently embedded in that history can better understand the uncertainty of events.

You can watch a video of the discussion here.