Berlin, Geneva, Paris, and Minsk. These are the places we usually associate with efforts to resolve the current confrontation between Ukraine and Russia, as well as Western countries and Russia in the wake of 2014.
As of October last year, Vienna has also joined the list, after an illustrious group of senior politicians and academics gathered in the Austrian capital’s lavish Hofburg Palace by invitation of Future Business Ukraine and the German-Ukrainian Forum. Given the location and attitude of the invitees, allusions to the Congress of Vienna which took place 200 years ago, defining the European order for decades to come, were made only half in jest.
‘New European Order’
Several months later in March 2015, it was reported that the Agency for the Modernisation of Ukraine (AMU), a body devoted to speedy reform in Ukraine, had been registered in Vienna. While founding members include French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, British Conservative Lord Risby, and the German member of the Bundestag (CDU) Karl-Georg Wellman, the AMU also draws an advisory board of eight senior figures (Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz, Laurence Parisot, Bernard Kouchner, Lord Mandelson, Lord Macdonald, Peer Steinbrück, Günter Verheugen, and Rupert Scholz). The names are impressive, to say the least.
