The Sixth Summit of First Ladies and Gentlemen, dedicated to finding stability in times of uncertainty, held in Kyiv

On Independence Day, Kyiv hosted the Sixth Summit of First Ladies and Gentlemen, held at the initiative of Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska.

This year’s Summit theme: “World-2026: Finding Stability in Times of Uncertainty.” The Summit became a platform where countries from around the world shared their own experience of resilience.

“I remember our first attempts to approach this complex, deeply important topic: three years ago, at our third Summit in Kyiv, we studied mental health in 11 countries. Ukraine was already facing an extraordinarily high level of stress caused by the war russia had unleashed. At the time, everyone was asking us for ‘the recipe for Ukrainian resilience’ — in truth, we were searching for it ourselves. Now we know: resilience doesn’t mean the absence of pain or fear. It means the ability to act despite them,” said Olena Zelenska.

The First Lady stressed that a society’s resilience carries not only a mental, but a tangible economic dimension as well.

“The global economy loses close to a trillion dollars every year to depression and anxiety, and mental health problems cost OECD countries up to 4% of GDP. That’s one more reason why it matters so much to talk about resilience, define it, and share it,” added the First Lady of Ukraine.

Presenting their countries’ concepts of resilience in person at the Summit were Spouse of the President of the Republic of Estonia Sirje Karis, First Lady of Lithuania Diana Nausėdienė, First Lady of Serbia Tamara Vučić, Spouse of the President of Finland Suzanne Elizabeth Innes-Stubb, Spouse of the President of Slovenia Aleš Musar, and First Lady of Romania Mirabela Grădinaru.

First Ladies and Gentlemen from Germany, Belize, Israel, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Guatemala and Georgia joined online. In total, the Sixth Summit brought together First Ladies and Gentlemen from 14 countries.

The programme was built around four thematic blocks — “Discover,” “Make Meaning,” “Survive. Act,” and “Stay Together” — and was divided into international and Ukrainian segments.

This year, the Summit was joined not only by First Ladies and Gentlemen but also by heads of state, who spoke in the “Stay Together” segment: President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Finland Alexander Stubb, President of Estonia Alar Karis and President of Lithuania Gitanas Nausėda.

The “Make Meaning” segment featured American writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker Sebastian Junger, author of Tribe, and Ukrainian military chaplain, public figure, writer, lecturer, and philosopher Andriy Zelinskyy.

The “Survive. Act” segment opened with the panel discussion “From the Resilience of People to the Resilience of Systems” — dialogues between government representatives and people whose experience illustrates the discussion’s theme. Participants included: First Deputy Prime Minister — Minister of Energy Denys Shmyhal and Liudmyla Kozak, an engineer at the Chornobyl NPP’s physical protection department, who started her shift on February 23, 2022, and spent 26 days under occupation; Yuliia Svyrydenko, Prime Minister of Ukraine (2025–2026), First Deputy Prime Minister — Minister of Economy of Ukraine (2021–2025) and Olena Vlezko, a primary school teacher from the village of Myropillia in Sumy region who has taught children for more than 40 years, including during shelling and, now, remotely from Sumy; the Hatsan family from Kherson, who suffered during a shelling attack; Minister of Health Viktor Liashko and Yuliia Sydorenko, senior lieutenant of the civil protection service and psychologist at the Main Directorate of the State Emergency Service in Zaporizhzhia region; and writer and serviceman Illarion Pavliuk together with veteran and marine infantryman Hlib Stryzhko, head of a Veteran Hub branch.

As every year, the Summit delivered practical results. One of them is the Global Vocabulary of Resilience — an edition uniting the mosaic of experiences of 38 countries: notions, social practices, institutional models, and cultural frameworks that show concrete mechanisms of resilience.

Olena Zelenska personally presented Ukraine’s philosophy of resilience, developed by Ukrainian scholars — “Sophiynist,” placed within the dimension of “Make Meaning”: seeing reality as a whole, with both mind and heart at once. A team of Ukrainian experts defined the term as a philosophy that combines the will to live, the strength to fight, and the wisdom to learn.

A separate part of the programme was the Garden of Sophiynist — a space created specifically for the Sixth Summit. Throughout the day, guests and participants had the opportunity to get acquainted with Ukrainian practices of resilience: to try techniques of applied art, view original installations, and feel the cultural context from which the notion of Sophiynist arises.

Co-organizers of the Summit: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, The Coordination Center for Mental Health of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, The Ukrainian mental health program “How Are U?”, initiated by Olena Zelenska, and World Health Organization.

General Partners of the Summit: BGV Charity Fund and Universal Bank.

Official Partners of the Summit: Activitis Education and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Partners of the Summit: Vodafone Ukraine, Zagoriy Foundation, Yalta European Strategy (YES), and La Famiglia.

Media Partners of the Summit: Starlight Media and UNITED24 Media.

For reference, about the Summit

The Summit of First Ladies and Gentlemen is an annual international event, which in 2021 was initiated by the First Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska. Since then, it grew into a global platform that operates continuously and unites the spouses of heads of state who seek to use their influence to overcome today’s challenges, working on humanitarian issues.

Over the five previous years, the Summit has united more than 55 first ladies and gentlemen from all over the world. In 2022, it managed to raise more than $6 million for 92 ambulances. In 2023, a medical partnership was launched, within the framework of which more than 100 memoranda of cooperation have now been concluded. In 2024, participants adopted a joint declaration on the protection of children’s rights during armed conflicts and wars, and for its implementation developed an expert document, presented at the 79th session of the UN General Assembly. In 2025, the Summit for the first time became a two-day event, gathered representatives of 20 countries of the world, and presented an international study on the role of education in shaping personal resilience, the social capital of countries, and a culture of peace.