On 18 March 2014, Russia formally annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea. Russia’s first annexation has wrought unprecedented and brutal repressions in Crimea and a sharp decline in human rights, where Crimean Tatars, in particular, but also ethnic Ukrainians, Ukrainian speakers, and political dissidents, have faced arrest, censorship, torture, kidnapping, extra-legal prosecutions, and murder. Russia did anything but stop at Crimea: in 2014, Russia brought conflict to Ukraine’s regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. And in 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of and war against Ukraine, committing horrific war crimes against civilians and annexing four further Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. This public online event is organised to commemorate and discuss the events surrounding the 10-year anniversary of Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine and the events that have followed. It is the first of a two part reflection on the anniversary of the Russian invasion. Speakers will discuss the impact of the invasion and occupation on the people of Crimea and the criminal legacy of the annexation for international law. The second part of this event takes place on the 25th March 2024.
Meet the speakers and chair
Tetyana Antsupova is a British Academy Research Fellow at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. She was previously Judge of the Supreme Court of Ukraine (2017–2023) and the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court of Ukraine (2019–2023). Before 2017 she acted as Head of the Department of International and Comparative Law of International Humanitarian University (Odesa); professor of the European Union Law and Comparative Law Department of National University "Odesa Law Academy" and the Department of International Law of National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Kyiv). She is also a board member of the Ukrainian Association of International Law and a Visiting professor at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń (Poland).
Elmaz Asan is a journalist working at ATR, the Crimean Tatar TV channel, and a PhD student specialising in the history of the illegal Russian invasion of Crimea, both in 1783 and in 2014. She is also a visiting researcher at the University of Cambridge from 2022 to 2023, where her research project focuses on ‘British travellers on the Russification of Crimea at the turn of 18-19th centuries’.
Sergii Koziakov is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Law School and Associate Professor at The National Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv, The Institute of International Relations, Chamber of International Private Law (1987-p.t.) and Ukrainian Diplomatic Academy. He has been a member of the National Bar Association since 1994 and served as the Chairman of the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine(2014-2019), overseeing open competitions for the new Supreme Court and the Higher Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine. He was also a member of the National Commission for Strengthening Democracy and Establishing the Principles of the Rule of Law (2005-2007, the Judicial Reform Council (2014-2019) and the Council of Europe European Commission of the Efficiency of Judges (2018-2022).
Eleanor Knott (@ellie_knott) is Assistant Professor in Qualitative Methods in the Department of Methodology at ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳. Her current research focuses on the politics of citizenship and identity in post-Soviet space and beyond. In 2022, she published Kin Majorities: Identity and Citizenship in Crimea and Moldova.
Ukraine in global context is an online event series run by PeaceRep’s Ukraine programme.
The ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Conflict and Civicness Research Group (@ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳_CCRG) is part of ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ IDEAS, the foreign policy think tank for the London School of Economics and Political Science. Through sustained engagement with policymakers and opinion-formers, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ IDEAS provides a forum that informs policy debate and connects academic research with the practice of diplomacy and strategy.
This event is organised as part of our work for the Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform (PeaceRep), an international research project on peace and transition processes in the 21st century led by the University of Edinburgh Law School and funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).