THE WAR ABOVE US

Andrius Kubilius is the European Commissioner for Defence and Space, a position held since December 2024. He twice served as Prime Minister of Lithuania and was a Member of the European Parliament from 2019 to 2024.

Kęstutis Budrys is the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania, a position held since December 2024. He was Chief National Security Adviser to the President of Lithuania from 2022, and earlier served as Deputy Director of the State Security Department and as presidential adviser on intelligence and defence policy.

Robertas Kaunas is the Minister of National Defence of Lithuania. He is a Member of the Seimas and previously served on the Kaunas city council. He is an engineer by training.

Simon Ostrovsky is a Special Correspondent for PBS NewsHour, reporting on Ukraine and Russia. He previously worked as a correspondent for VICE News, where he created the Russian Roulette series, and has received a duPont-Columbia Award.

Brigadier General Nerijus Stankevičius is the Chief of Army of the Lithuanian Armed Forces, a post he took over in August 2025. He previously commanded the Žemaitija mechanised infantry brigade and worked in the Strategic Planning Division at NATO’s SHAPE.

Matthew Savill is Director of Military Sciences at RUSI, focusing on trends in modern conflict and the use of force. He spent over 20 years in UK defence and security, mainly at the Ministry of Defence, including roles in Defence Intelligence and Special Operations policy.

Dr. Cecilie Hellestveit is a lawyer and social scientist researching international law, armed conflict and geopolitics, particularly the regulation of modern methods and means of warfare. She leads a Norwegian Ministry of Defence-funded project on Ukraine and international law.

Colonel Dr Markus Reisner is a General Staff Officer in the Austrian Armed Forces and Head of the Institute for Officer Training at the Theresan Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt. A former Jagdkommando special forces officer, he is one of the Austrian Armed Forces’ military experts on the war in Ukraine.

Major General Pascal Legai is Senior Security Coordinator and Adviser to the Director General at the European Space Agency, a role he has held since 2021. A former French Air & Space Force officer, he was Director of the EU Satellite Centre from 2015 to 2019.

Rob Lee is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a former Marine infantry officer. A leading military analyst focused on the Ukrainian Armed Forces and Russian military strategy, he co-runs the Two Marines newsletter on the war in Ukraine and defence technology.

Wojciech Solak is Director of GLOBSEC’s Centre for Democracy and Resilience, leading work on democratic resilience across Central and Eastern Europe. He has managed projects for the EU, NATO and the U.S. Department of State, specialising in FIMI, strategic communication and societal resilience.

Augustinas Vizbaras is a co-founder of BROLIS, established in 2011 with his brothers Kristijonas and Dominykas as Brolis Semiconductors, a Lithuanian developer of semiconductor lasers and optoelectronics. Today the Brolis Defence Group makes electro-optical and laser systems for defence and security customers.

Ed Veen is a Senior Naval Consultant at Damen Naval and a retired Director of the Netherlands Coastguard.

Dr Ieva Gajauskaitė is Head of Division in the Total Defence and Crisis Management Group at Lithuania’s Ministry of National Defence, leading work on resilience against hybrid threats. She also heads the Analysis Bureau at the National Crisis Management Centre and was previously an Associate Professor at the General Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania.

Johannes Arlt is Senior Vice President at STARK. He is a former member of the German Bundestag (SPD), where he sat on the Defence and Economic Affairs Committees. Earlier he served in the German Air Force, completing seven overseas deployments, six involving unmanned systems.

Jussi Järvinen is Executive Vice President of Patria, leading the Protected Mobility business unit, which covers the company’s wheeled and tracked armoured vehicles. He has 20 years of international business leadership experience and chairs the strategy group of PIA (Finnish Defence and Aerospace Industries).

Dr. Sidharth Kaushal is Senior Research Fellow in the Military Sciences Team at RUSI. His research focuses on naval warfare, deep strike, IAMD and deterrence, and he works closely with the Royal Navy, Royal Marines and allied militaries.

Major General Peter Andrysiak (U.S. Army, Ret.) is a Senior Counselor at Palantir Technologies, advising on its European defence initiatives, after 35 years of service. As Chief of Staff of U.S. European Command he led digital transformation, and earlier as Director of Operations he led planning for the U.S. response to the Ukraine crisis.

Caecilia Wijgers served as Dutch ambassador in conflict and post-conflict countries such as Afghanistan and Mali. She has extensive hands-on experience in civil-military cooperation and crisis response.

Oleksandra Azarkhina is a former Deputy Minister for the Development of Communities and Territories of Ukraine, co-founder of the We Build Ukraine think tank and adviser at the Economic Security Council of Ukraine. She until recently led International Cooperation and Innovation at the Air Force C-UAV Command, countering Shahed-type threats.

Jennie Olmsted is a Russia Analyst at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). She contributes to and oversees the daily Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment and analyses Russian military campaign design and battlefield operations.

Dalia Bankauskaitė is Partnership Associate Professor of strategic communications at Vilnius University and a Senior Fellow in the Democratic Resilience Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). Her work focuses on total defense, hybrid aggression and influence operations, and societal resilience.

Julius von Freytag-Loringhoven is Head of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom Baltic States, where he opened the Freedom Center in Vilnius in 2025. He previously headed the Foundation’s offices in Jerusalem and Moscow, the latter until he was personally blacklisted in Russia.

Julian Röpcke is Chief Marketing Officer of United Unmanned Systems (UUS) and a former BILD war correspondent and military analyst. He spent over 11 years reporting from Ukraine and other conflict zones, and now hosts UUS’s FRONTLINE analysis series.

Robert Tollast is a research fellow in the Land Warfare team at RUSI, specialising in uncrewed systems. He was previously Assistant Foreign Editor and Military Affairs Reporter at The National in Abu Dhabi, and advised the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Federico Borsari is a Fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), covering NATO and European defense and the use of novel technologies in military operations. He is also an associate with the Tochnyi OSINT Group and a subject-matter expert with the NATO C-UAS Community of Interest.

Dr. Alexandr Burilkov is a senior researcher in defence and security at the Centre for the Study of Democracy (ZDEMO), Leuphana University of Lüneburg, and a senior fellow at the GLOBSEC GeoTech Center. He is an expert on military and security issues in Russia, China and the post-Soviet space.

Dr. Mykola Nazarov is a Senior Analyst at the Sahaidachnyi Security Center in Ukraine and a Research Fellow at the International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS) in Tallinn. He specialises in national resilience and civil-military cooperation.

Janet H. Anderson is a journalist and commentator focused on politics, international affairs and international courts, who has reported from post-conflict environments across Africa, Asia and the Middle East. She co-founded and co-presents a podcast on The Hague and war crimes cases, and works extensively as a moderator.

Maciej Szymanski is Team Leader at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space (DG DEFIS), working to build an EU-wide defence market. He previously was Deputy Chair of the Defence Industry Working Party during the Polish Council Presidency and Head of the Economic and Trade Section at the EU Delegation to Russia.

Katarzyna Ananicz is a Policy Officer at the Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space (DG DEFIS) of the European Commission.

Lina Jankūnė is a Legal and Policy Officer at the Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space (DG DEFIS) of the European Commission.

Arūnas Vinciūnas is Head of Unit for Ukraine defence cooperation at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space (DG DEFIS).

Agnė Žekonytė is an Adviser at Planning and Analysis unit at the Strategic Communications and Public Relations Department of the Ministry of National Defence of the Republic of Lithuania, working on information threats and the concept of cognitive warfare, and one of the organisers of the annual Vilnius StratCom conference.

Mykola Ivanovych Torianyk is Mayor of Khotin and Head of the Khotin Settlement Council in Sumy District, Ukraine, a border community, a post he has held since 2016. He initiated a volunteer territorial defence formation in the first days of the full-scale invasion and supports the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Žygimantas Solovjovas is Head of the Preparedness Division of the Vilnius City Municipality and a Lithuanian officer with over 16 years of service in the Voluntary National Defence Force (KASP). A participant in the international peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, he specialises in civil protection, crisis management and societal resilience.

Tomas Milašauskas is CEO and co-founder of RSI Europe, a Lithuanian defence technology company that makes remote explosives initiation systems and FPV drones. RSI Europe has announced plans for a factory of up to €50 million in the Panevėžys district.

Audrius Zujus is the founder and CEO of Mainline, a Lithuanian company building defence technology, including the Drone Radar app for detecting drones with smartphones. He previously founded Argyle, a US fintech infrastructure company, and was the first president of the Lithuanian AI Association.

Mykolas Katkus is the head and founder of Repsense. He is a communication expert with more than 20 years of experience in public relations, political and corporate communications.

Ugnė Karaliūnaitė is Deputy Editor in Chief of Delfi.lt.

Romas Klapatauskas is a member of the Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union.

Dr.-Ing. Frank Dirksen is Chief Commercial Officer and Domain Lead Land at Helsing. He previously served as CEO of Rheinmetall Denel Munition in South Africa and spent 15 years as a Bundeswehr officer.

Atilla Çağrı Dağıstan is Air Defence Systems Program Manager at ASELSAN with over 12 years of experience in tactical air defence. He leads advanced air defence programs, including Türkiye’s “Steel Dome” concept, and has worked on SHORAD/VSHORAD and counter-UAS systems.

Julian Kelterborn is Co-Founder and CTO of United Unmanned Systems (UUS), a German-Ukrainian defense technology company building combat-proven unmanned systems. He works closely with Ukrainian units, applying frontline feedback to development, and advises on drone threats and counter-UAS.

Eyal Engel is Director of Sales and Business Development at IAI (Israel Aerospace Industries).

Evaldas Dūdonis is a Partner at Sorainen and co-head of the firm’s Defence sector group.

Kerry Hoppe is Manager of Government Affairs and Business Development at TYTAN Technologies.

Helmut Michel is a counter-UAS field expert at Aaronia with more than 10 years of experience in military electronic warfare. He is a former commanding officer of the Austrian ELDRO C-UAS element and former Institute Director for Cyber and Electronic Warfare.

Vitālijs Rakstiņš is a Latvian practitioner with twenty years of experience in the Ministries of Interior and Defence. He has served as Defence Counsellor to the Latvian Delegation to NATO, Director of the Crisis Management Department and non-resident resilience advisor to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence, and lectures at Rīga Stradiņš University.

Jack Twiss is a lecturer at the Baltic Defence College in Tartu, Estonia, and a former Netherlands Ambassador to Lithuania. He previously served as Director of Intelligence at the Dutch AIVD and as National Security Advisor to Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

Michael Sheldon is an open source researcher focusing on Russia and Ukraine. He has nearly a decade of OSINT investigations experience with the Centre for Information Resilience, Bellingcat and the Atlantic Council.

Donatas Gurevičius is an Advisor at the Fire and Rescue Department under the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Lithuania.

Elias Norin works at the Swedish Civil Defence and Resilience Agency (MCF).

Cecilia Lagerdahl is a Project Manager at the Swedish Civil Defence and Resilience Agency (MCF).

Mārtiņš Mežulis is a Defence Program Expert at CIVITTA.

Martynas Banys is an emergency medicine physician with field experience in Ukraine.

Donata Ketlerytė is a Project Manager at the Geopolitics and Security Studies Center (GSSC), where she oversees international projects and high-level security and foreign policy events. Her areas of interest include cooperation and resilience among the Nordic and Baltic countries and countering disinformation.

Neringa Bladaitė is Acting Head of Business Resilience at LTG Group.

Dr. Nazar Syvak leads the Victory Robots initiative at Dignitas Fund, which trains and integrates Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel on Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs). The initiative has prepared almost 4,000 UGV operators. He is also a security studies scholar focused on gray-zone warfare and emerging military technologies.

Bohdan Danyliv is Head of the Military Department at the Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation, coordinating cooperation with Ukrainian Defence Forces units and large-scale defence technology projects. He helped build the Foundation’s interceptor drone, short-range air defence and UAV operator training capabilities.

Dan Kucherenko is Head of International Partnerships at the Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation, Ukraine, which delivers critical equipment to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. After the full-scale invasion he became an angel investor and advisor at Warm Wind, and co-launched the military podcast Defence Forward.

Mykola Sierga is the Founder and Commander of the Cultural Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Mantas Tamošaitis is the Director of Naujasis Židinys-Aidai, a Lithuanian cultural journal.

Carsten Engdal Pedersen is Director of International Business Development & Exports at Fire Point.

Jamie O’Connor-Delbert is Director for EU, NATO and the Eastern Flank at Alta Ares.

Axel Delbecq is Baltic and Eastern Flank Manager at Alta Ares.

Aistė Bertulytė-Žikevičienė is Director of the International Partnerships Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania.

Šarūnas Radvilavičius is Head of the Kyiv Branch of Lithuania’s Central Project Management Agency (CPVA). He previously served as General Manager of FHI 360’s Lithuanian branch and as adviser on education, science and culture to the President of Lithuania.

Richard Evans is a Deployment Strategist at Palantir, working on privacy and civil liberties. Based in London, he has worked on Palantir’s UK defence, UK healthcare and international public sector business since joining in 2017. Before that he was a lawyer in the New Zealand Government.

Rimantas Žylius is a Deployment Strategist at Palantir, which he joined in 2025. He was adviser to Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė on open data, digital transformation and public procurement from 2021, and served as Lithuania’s Minister of Economy from 2011 to 2012.

Lukas Andriukaitis is a Deployment Strategist at Palantir. He is a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), where he was previously an associate director, and teaches digital forensics at the College of Europe in Natolin. He has also served as a lieutenant in the Lithuanian Special Operations Forces.

Tadas Stelionis is CEO of 3P-Defence, a Lithuanian company.

Elena Dushenok is Head of Growth at SkyFall, a Kyiv-based drone manufacturer founded in 2022.

Vladyslav Yevstafiev is Business Development Manager at Farsight Vision.

Captain Oleksandr Voitko is Deputy Commander of the 413th Unmanned Systems Forces Regiment “RAID” of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.