Prof. Maria Mälksoo gave an invited lecture in the framework of the Swiss Chair Seminar Series on ‘Envisioning Future Deterrence: Peace, Accountability and the End Times after the Russo-Ukrainian War’ at the European University Institute (EUI) in Fiesole, Italy, on 10 April 2025.

The talk revisited the political and academic exchanges during 2022-2024 about the envisioned endings, peace settlements, and Ukraine’s security-political future-related scenarios as distinctly charged political designs for the post-war interaction order between the United States, Europe, Russia, and the so-called Global South. The visions of future peace reflect definite temporal sources and reference points of ontological security for Ukraine, its regional neighbours, Europe, the US and the institutional West at large. The nature of the end of this war marks the ‘end times’ to wildly varying degrees for the engaged actors across the globe. Peace agreement as a ritual component of ending a war has become a political battlefield over envisioning future world order, demonstrating the malleability of the notion of deterrence therein.