Welcome to YES

Aliens in Yalta.  Yalta is famous for the 1945 conference between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill on the future of post-war Europe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalta_Conference.  That conference took place in the Livadia Palace, a cool white structure overlooking the Black Sea.  The Livadia Palace is also the setting for the Sixth Annual Conference of the Yalta European Strategy, an initiative established by Victor Pinchuk, a prominent Ukrainian businessman.  It's a target-rich environment for diplomats and other networkers: this year the guests include the three presidential candidates leading in the polls, Yulia Tymoshekno, Victor Yanukovych and Arsenii Yatsenyuk, all of whose presentations and Q&A sessions are broadcast in full on TV.  Their subject is "Ukraine and the World after the Crisis" and sessions include Ukraine/Russia, The Future of Europe, EU/Ukraine and the rise of China, most chaired by Chrystia Freeland of the Financial Times.  There are many prominent attendees (see http://yes-ukraine.org/ for a full list of sessions and participants) plus links by video-bridge with Shimon Peres, George Soros, Alan Greenspan and Dominique Strauss-Kahn.  There's a lively atmosphere and some combative exchanges, including between former Russian Prime Minister Chernomyrdin and former German Foreign Minister Fischer on the future of Europe's gas pipelines.  It's a privilege to be able to meet and exchange ideas with so many fascinating characters.  There's also a sense that the very fact such a varied and senior group can gather to exchange views freely is a sign of Ukraine's development as a democracy. 

The sense of something special is enhanced by the presence of artworks from Victor Pinchuk's collection.  These include "Oneness" by the Japanese sculptor Mariko Mori, consisting of six aliens standing in a circle in the lobby close to the original Yalta conference table and chairs.  If you hug an alien, its heart starts beating.  If six people huge all six aliens simultaneously, the base of the sculpture lights up.  Result: the lobby is full of conference participants hugging aliens.  This seems to me a good thing, both because hugging is good in principle and because it creates the opportunity for one conference participant, tongue-in-cheek, to liken the six aliens in the lobby to the six EU aspirant states of the Eastern Partnership.  It's a pretty funny analogy, although it does omit one key point: for Ukraine's EU aspirations to become a reality, Ukraine itself has to do a huge amount of work to reform its economy, stamp out corruption and prepare itself for membership.  The aliens, by contrast, simply stand there immobile – no matter how much you hug them.