On 12 April 2024, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Policy and Interparliamentary Cooperation Oleksandr Merezhko took part in the Forum on Wartime Diplomacy, which was held at the Hennadii Udovenko Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. The event was organised by the MFA of Ukraine, the Foreign Policy Council “Ukrainian Prism” and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.
The event was attended by the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba, diplomats, experts, representatives of NGOs and the media.
The main issues raised at the Forum included the fundamental principles and priority directions of Ukraine's current foreign policy, as well as an analysis of Ukraine's foreign policy achievements.
The Forum participants discussed the development of relations with individual regions and foreign countries, in particular Latin America and the Caribbean, public, parliamentary and cultural diplomacy, various aspects of countering russian armed aggression through political and diplomatic means and the implementation of the President Zelenskyi's Peace Formula.
In the framework of the discussion “Challenges and Responses of Wartime Diplomacy”, the Chairman of the Committee, Oleksandr Merezhko, informed the forum participants about the work of the Committee, the permanent delegations of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine to international parliamentary organisations and parliamentary friendship groups on interparliamentary relations with foreign countries and stressed that the Committee pays great attention to the issue of delegitimisation of the russian federation as an influential player in the international arena, its status as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, decolonisation of the aggressor state, expansion of contacts with foreign parliaments, in particular those of Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia, as well as advocacy for the recognition by the world's states of the war crimes committed by the russian federation and the Holodomor of 1932-1933 as genocide against the Ukrainian people and increase of financial, economic and military-technical assistance to our country.