At home preparation prior to the class

1. Look up shortly what these dates and events mean for Ukraine:

• Holodomor
• Crimean Tatars
• 1991
• Orange Revolution
• 2014 - Revolution of Dignity/Maidan Revolution; Annexation of Crimea; Luhansk and Donetsk regions
• 24 February 2022 (our class will take place on the eve of the anniversary)

2. Read or watch (at least) one of these:

 

Basic information if you don’t know much about Russia’s war on Ukraine:

1.        Bloomberg: Understanding the Roots of Russia’s War in Ukraine

A bit more advanced:

2.      A historian’s view: 

3.      A security studies view: 

 

3. Recommended reading:

Also about journalists and activists:

War crimes. Bucha is one of the stories that made global headlines. Please be warned, the article documents a very dire reality.

 

  

Guest lecturers (from Ukraine via ZOOM):

Mariia Sulialina is a human rights defender and a project manager at the Center of Civic Education “Almenda”. 

Almenda has been documenting violations of human rights in Crimea since 2014, primarily focusing on the situation with the educational rights of children, militarization, and the indoctrination of children. Since 24 February 2022, it has been also working on documenting grave human rights violations committed against children.

Originally from Yalta, Crimea, Mariia has been working on protecting the educational rights of children from the occupied territories of Ukraine for the last eight years. She also has a vast amount of experience in the documentation of war crimes, working in the Center of Documentation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union for three years on Crimea and Donbas cases and taking part in preparing submissions for the International Criminal Court. Throughout her career, Ms. Sulialina has been involved as an external expert in the preparation of analytical reports on the situation with human rights in Crimea. Today, she is also coordinating the documentation work in the coalition “Ukraine. 5 a.m.”, which includes 31 Ukrainian human rights organizations.

Mariia suggests you have a look at one of the reports "Universal Soldier" here:

This is a short article in Czech on a related topic:

Anastasia Moskvychova, Kyiv-based Ukrainian journalist and civil society activist

Anastasiia used to work for Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe and as a research analyst for Human Rights Center ZMINA. Her main focus is the human rights movement in Ukraine, at ZMINA she was conducting the monitoring of persecution of civic activists and human rights defenders in Ukraine. Now she is working for international organization Front Line Defenders which specializes in protection and empowerment of human rights defenders as protection officer in Ukraine. 

Pavla Hoffmeisterová, NESEHNUTI - sexual war crimes and support to Ukrainian initiatives helping the survivors