Director V. Dubovyk has delivered one of the key-note addresses at the "Quarter century of Ukraine-U.S. friendship" conference which took place at Lviv Ivan Franko University on April 12-13, 2016. His talk was focused on the subject of U.S. position since the start of Russian aggression against Ukraine.

V. Dubovyk has noted that since Crimean annexation Washington has come up with providing essential assistance to Ukraine ranging from diplomatic activities to financial assistance to providing non-lethal military equipment to sending military instructors to train Ukrainian military to imposing sanctions on Russia. At the same time, Washington has been looking for de-escalation, being more than ready to provide Mr. Putin with some sort of an “exit strategy”.

The U.S. brings attention to the situation in and around Ukraine in a variety of ways, including multilateral venues, unilateral initiatives and bilateral frameworks (pretty much exhausting its obligations under the now notorious Budapest memorandum of 1994). Washington supports Ukraine’s economy and implementation of reforms. The executive branch has shown more cautious approach while the Congress advocated more forceful steps. Within executive there were also certain divisions in nuances of the policy. The approaches of scholars range from libertarians/isolationists (rejecting the whole notion of a need to be involved in this crisis and help Ukraine) to classical realists (seeing this through the prism of the balance of power, divisions in spheres of influence with Russia) to activist realists (advocating more robust push back against Russian assertiveness) to liberal interventionists (suggesting to defend the freedom of Ukraine and its chance to proceed with democratic reforms vis-à-vis increasingly authoritarian Russia) to neoconservatives (seeing this as an opening for a new cold war).