Ukraine, Hybrid Warfare and Cultural Heritage

Manipulations with Cultural Heritage as a Method of Warfare: Crimea, Russia and International Security

Roundtable

Organizers: The Centre for Defence Strategies, Kiev, and the Nordic Center for Cultural Heritage and Armed Conflict.

6 April 2021, Tuesday, 13:00-14:30 (Kyiv time)

The Roundtable analysed Russia’s encroachments on Ukraine’s cultural heritage in Crimea through the lens of international security, geopolitics, hybrid threats, strategic communication, the de-occupation of Crimea, and the protection against similar hybrid threats in future.

Russia’s occupation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in March 2014 has been described as “the greatest challenge for the post-Cold War European security architecture.” It has also questioned the adequacy of the international legal regime applicable to occupied territories in the era of hybrid warfare.

Russia aims to increase its historical, cultural and religious dominance over Crimea’s past, present and future. A wide range of manipulations with Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar cultural heritage perpetrated by the occupied peninsula - the destructive reconstruction of the Bakhchysarai Palace, transfer of artefacts, unauthorised archaeological excavations - have been instrumentalised to enable that aim.

The discussion is held as a part of the independent expert cluster of the Crimean Platform - the initiative aimed to elaborate practical legal and policy recommendations on the de-occupation and reintegration of Crimea.

Participants:

○ Elmira Ablialimova, Project Manager, Crimean Centre for Strategic Research;

○ Emine Dzhaparova, First Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs;

○ Mark Laity, Director, StratCom Academy; formerly Director, Communications Division, SHAPE/NATO;

○ Dr Frederik Rosén, Nordic Center for Cultural Heritage and Armed Conflict;

○ Dr Andreas Umland, Research Fellow, The Swedish Institute of International Affairs.

Moderator:

Dr Kateryna Busol, international lawyer, Centre for Defence Strategies

The event will be held in Zoom in English. The simultaneous Ukrainian translation will be broadcast on the Centre for Defence Strategies’ Facebook page.