Profs & Pints Baltimore: Ukraine's Peace Prospects

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “Ukraine’s Peace Prospects,” a look at the chances of ending a long and brutal conflict and keeping Russia from invading its neighbor again, with Michael Kimmage, director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, former U.S. State Department planner for Ukraine and Russia, and author of Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-ukraine .]

Throughout his second term President Trump has been driving for an end to the war in Ukraine, in recent weeks making a big diplomatic push through meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska and with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and various European officials in the White House.

Will such efforts bring lasting peace? Will the outcome be easy for Ukrainians to stomach and will it deter Russian aggression elsewhere?

Hear such questions tackled by Dr. Michael Kimmage, a leading expert on that region who has been giving insightful and prescient Profs and Pints talks on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine since even before it began.

We’ll start by examining the historical roots of the conflict going back to the end of the Cold War in 1991. We’ll look at how Russian initiated the first phase of the war—annexing Crimea and invading Eastern Ukraine—following Ukraine’s 2014 “Maidan Revolution” or “Revolution of Dignity.”

You’ll learn why the first attempt to end this conflict—a series of agreements negotiated in Minsk, Belarus in 2014 and 2015—did not result in any lasting peace. Dr. Kimmage will explain Putin's motivations for going into Ukraine again and sketch out the course of the latest conflict from Ukrainians' brave defense of Kyiv to the twists and turns of the war across many different battlefields. He’ll show you how Russia has been unable for a long time to make any real progress but the costs to Ukrainian civilians have been impossibly high.

This talk will conclude with a deep dive into the Trump administration’s efforts to change the conversation about the war and bring about peace. It will lay out the reasons why the war is likely to continue for a long time and explore what it means to have a sprawling, bloody, unresolved conflict at the heart of Europe. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 5 pm. The talk starts at 6:30.)

Image: An area of Kyiv following an April 2025 Russian missile and drone attack. Photo by State Emergency Service of Ukraine / Wikimedia Commons