Please join the Russia and Eurasia Program at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the Department of Political Science, and the International Relations Program at Tufts University for a panel discussion with Professor Oxana Shevel, Professor Daniel Drezner, Professor Monica Toft, Visiting Professor Mikhail Troitskiy, former Visiting Professor Volodymyr Dubovyk. The panel discussion will focus on the Trump administration’s evolving approach toward Russia, Ukraine, and NATO, as well as how European countries have responded to recent developments in the Russia-Ukraine war and U.S. negotiations with Russia and Ukraine. 

Arik Burakovsky will moderate the conversation. The event is open to the public. Please register via the Microsoft Form here to attend the event in person or let us know if you would like to attend virtually. We will provide you with the Zoom details in your confirmation email message. Please contact us with any questions you might have about the event or if you would like to submit discussion questions for the speaker in advance.  

Visitors to the Medford/Somerville campus are welcome to park in the Dowling Garage or Cousens Parking Lot. Visitors may pay for their parking sessions via the web portal or payment kiosks. Please contact us with any questions you might have about the event.

Questions:

• How is Trump shifting the U.S. approach to NATO and European security? To what extent is Trump’s demand for NATO burden-sharing realistic, and how are European allies responding? 
• What are the risks and benefits of Trump’s transactional approach to alliances and military commitments? What might happen with U.S. forward-deployed forces in Europe, including bases in Germany, Poland, and the Baltic countries?
• Has Trump effectively tied continued U.S. aid to Ukraine to economic concessions, such as the critical minerals deal, and negotiations with Russia? What does that mean for Ukraine’s long-term security and sovereignty?
• Could Ukraine sustain its war effort without robust U.S. military and intelligence support, and how are European countries adjusting to fill the gap that could emerge? How does the nearing defeat of Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region affect Ukraine’s negotiating position?
• Does Trump’s approach increase the likelihood of a peace settlement, or does it embolden Russia to press for more concessions? What are the odds that Russia will accept the temporary ceasefire offer, and what might happen if Russia refuses it?
• How has Trump’s approach affected intra-European debates on defense and strategic autonomy? Could Trump’s actions accelerate the creation of an EU-led security framework independent of NATO? 
• Is there a risk of NATO fragmentation if the United States disengages from European security commitments? If the United States withdraws or limits its support, what role can nuclear deterrence play in European security? 
• What does Trump’s interest in negotiating directly with Russia suggest about the future of U.S.-Russia relations? What role do sanctions and economic leverage play in shaping Trump’s approach to Russia? Would a Trump-Putin rapprochement have ripple effects beyond Ukraine, such as in Syria, the Arctic, arms control, cybersecurity, or U.S.-China relations?
• Could a U.S.-Russia peace deal bypass Ukraine, and what would be the consequences for Ukraine’s sovereignty? How should European allies and Ukraine navigate the possibility of a U.S.-Russia agreement that does not align with their interests?

Speakers: 

	Daniel Drezner is Distinguished Professor of International Politics, a nonresident senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and Co-Director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at The Fletcher School. Prior to joining Fletcher, he taught at the University of Chicago and the University of Colorado at Boulder. He has previously held positions with Civic Education Project, the RAND Corporation, and the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and he has received fellowships from the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Council on Foreign Relations, and Harvard University. He has written seven books, including All Politics is Global (2009) and Theories of International Politics and Zombies (2011), and edited three others, including The Uses and Abuses of Weaponized Interdependence (2021). He has published articles in numerous scholarly journals as well as in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, and Foreign Affairs, and has been a regular contributor to Foreign Policy and The Washington Post. He received his B.A. in political economy from Williams College and an M.A. in economics and Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University.
	Volodymyr Dubovyk is an Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations and Director of the Center for International Studies at Odesa I. I. Mechnikov National University in Ukraine and a non-resident Senior Fellow with the Democratic Resilience Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). He is a former Visiting Professor at Tufts University. He is one of the preeminent Ukrainian experts in the fields of international affairs, security studies, and foreign policy analysis. Dubovyk has conducted research at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1997, 2006-2007, the latter being his first Fulbright), and at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland (2002). He taught at the University of Washington in 2013 as well as St. Edwards University and the University of Texas from 2016-2017 (his second Fulbright). He is co-author of Ukraine and European Security (1999) and has published numerous articles on U.S.-Ukraine relations, Black Sea regional security, international security, and Ukraine’s foreign policy and security.
	Oxana Shevel is an Associate Professor of Comparative Politics at the Department of Political Science and Director of the International Relations Program at Tufts University. Her research and teaching focuses on the post-Soviet region, especially Ukraine and Russia, and issues such as nation building and identity politics, citizenship policies, memory politics, church-state relations, and democratization process in the post-Soviet region. She is co-author (with Maria Popova) of a book on the root causes of the Russo-Ukrainian war, Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States (Polity, 2024). She has recently been elected to serve as Vice President and President of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Her earlier book, Migration, Refugee Policy, and State Building in Postcommunist Europe (Cambridge, 2011), examined how the politics of national identity and strategies of the UNHCR shape refugee admission policies in the post-Communist region, leading countries to be more or less receptive to refugees. She holds a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University, an M.Phil in International Relations from the University of Cambridge in England, and a B.A. in English and French from Kyiv State University in Ukraine.
	Monica Duffy Toft is Academic Dean and Professor of International Politics and Director of the Center for Strategic Studies at The Fletcher School. Before joining Fletcher, she taught at Oxford University's Blavatnik School of Government and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. While at Harvard, she directed the Initiative on Religion in International Affairs and was the assistant director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies. She was educated at the University of Chicago (M.A. and Ph.D. in political science) and at the University of California, Santa Barbara (B.A. in political science and Slavic languages and literature, summa cum laude). Prior to that, she spent four years in the United States Army as a Russian linguist. Her recent books include Securing the Peace (2010), Political Demography (2011), and God's Century (2011). She is a research associate of the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford and at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She is a supernumerary fellow at Brasenose College, University of Oxford, a Global Scholar of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Political Instability Task Force. She most recently served as the World Politics Fellow at Princeton University.
	Mikhail Troitskiy is a Visiting Professor at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a Visiting Scholar at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. In 2023-2024 he was a Professor of Practice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2017-2022 he was Dean of and Associate Professor at the MGIMO University in Moscow and at the European University at St. Petersburg. In 2009-2015, Troitskiy worked as deputy director at the Russia office of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. His research interests include Russian politics and foreign relations, international security, conflict resolution, and negotiation. Troitskiy held visiting fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson International Center (2005-2006), as well as at Cambridge (2006) and Oxford (2008) universities. He is a member of PONARS Eurasia and the Steering Committee of the Processes of International Negotiation (PIN) groups of researchers. Troitskiy has contributed commentary to major international media, including The New York Times International Edition, Newsweek, The National Interest, CNN, NPR, BBC, The Moscow Times, and others.