Military Leadership and Veterans’ Public Diplomacy

25.2.2026

On February 24, the project team led by V.S. Kurylo and with organizational support from I.V. Myhovych and Ya.I. Yurkiv conducted a research-practical workshop titled “Military Leadership in Post-Conflict Society: How NATO Standards Can Work in Veterans’ Public Diplomacy”.

The event was attended by representatives of various professional and social groups – veterans, representatives of territorial communities, academic staff, psychological specialists, and students. The invited expert was Senior Researcher of the Research Department of the Institute of Strategic Communications, Colonel Viktor Volodymyrovych Shydliukh.

The conceptual core of the event was the notion of LDR (Leadership Development & Reinforcement / Readiness) as a system for developing military leadership, implemented not only through individual commander competencies, but primarily through an institutionalized culture of responsibility, trust, and initiative, formed on the basis of mission command principles, After Action Review methodology, and systematic reinforcement of organizational readiness.

A separate segment of the event was dedicated to studying the phenomenon of veteran leadership in an international context. Within the framework of analyzing coalition experience and NATO standards, the role of veterans as potential agents of intercultural communication, mediators, and representatives of local communities in the format of international partnership was examined. During the work process, participants made a conceptual transition from the position of “event participant” to the position of “action subject” capable of initiating and structuring international cooperation. Thus, the event fulfilled the function not only of an educational platform, but also of a research space where critical reflection on international experience in developing veterans’ leadership competencies took place through the prism of local sociocultural context and institutional capabilities of Ukrainian society. The implementation of such events confirms that the university is consistently developing an internationalized model of work with the veteran community, combining academic reflection, international experience, and practical design of social change.

The date of February 24 takes on special symbolic significance in the context of the project. It marks not only historical memory, but also actualizes the research-practical task of transforming military and post-conflict experience into a structured resource for social development. This transformational logic – from reflection on traumatic experience to its institutionalization in the format of leadership competencies – constitutes the conceptual core of the project.

As part of the implementation of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine’s project “Transformation of Military Experience into Social Leadership: An Internationalized Model of Veteran Empowerment as Agents of Social Change,” a research-practical workshop “Military Leadership in Post-Conflict Society: How NATO Standards Can Work in Veterans’ Public Diplomacy” took place.

According to the project team