Bye. Thank you very much to the Oxford Peace Studies Network for the invitation to speak today.
It's great to see you and see such a great turnout.
So as you've heard, I'm involved in Peace Reps.
Ukraine team say this program within Peace Rep has been running since October last year and we are working very closely with Ukrainians on the
ground in Ukraine and our research is really about co-creating knowledge with those that are experiencing the impacts of violent conflict.
And in that context, we part of our part of our research is building a network of local researchers on the ground in Ukraine,
spread across different territories, and using their insights into local conditions to feed ideas into our wider work and
to really build evidence based understanding of what is happening in this conflict.
And one of the big priorities for us, particularly in the run into the Ukraine recovery conference, is Ukraine's economic needs.
And in the talk I give today and I don't think I didn't realise we would get got a generous 15 minutes that
she had planned for ten say if I don't if I don't need ten you can tell me off because that was my intention.
And so and that will affect some of the analysis that I give you today, because Ukraine really isn't in a good place economically at the moment,
as well as the appalling crimes that are committed in the course of the Russian invasion, too.
So the question I'm really going to engage today is what does the war against Ukraine tell us about our changing world?
And how many people in my discipline, international relations, argue that this is really a return of geopolitics.
It's a return of great power politics in another discourse.
It's the revenge of the revisionist powers.
And I think all of these categorisations of the war against Ukraine are quite misleading and often made by people.
To be honest, you aren't on really getting insights to what's happening in Ukraine on the ground,
but speaking much more at a international geopolitical level or even an ivory tower level, if you want to put it pejoratively.
And they have a few things in common.
I think the first is that they're very state centric in their understanding of this conflict, particularly this idea, geopolitics,
political geography, that the most important thing about the world in which we live is fundamentally territory and who controls it.
I think that's a quite mistaken assumption when it comes to the course of this conflict.
It misses out by two elements that I think we need to consider.
The second is a question of time, which is really important in this idea of return, right?
It's drawing on a kind of sick little view of history that there's something that was present in the past that's just returning, it's coming back.
And so there's a resurgence of, if you like, a past sense of affairs.
The war is regenerated, something that we thought had lost.
And I think that's also quite mistaken because it's not asking the question we I think we need to ask about this war,
and that is what's new, what's distinctive, what's changing in global politics.
The other question, I think, is around the causes of the conflict that this often gets wrong.
If you think of it in terms of territory that the great powers, great states, there are security claims on the international order.
This can also lead to the, I think, the false claim that NATO's expansion caused the war.
And there's quite a good body of evidence to show that this simply isn't the case.
I mean, one data point could be Putin's statement in May 2002, where while he didn't renounce Russia's historic opposition to NATO's expansion,
he certainly indicated that he was extremely relaxed about it.
And even in the case of Ukraine,
explicitly stated that that the decision of whether Ukraine should join NATO or not was a decision that only Ukraine could make
independently a correct actually position made at a time when Russia's relationship to the West was obviously very different.
And I think the the other question that we need to consider here is whether that leads into the conclusion that really, you know,
the nature of the military balance of forces between states is actually the most decisive one,
because actually it's not just the military balance of forces, it's how individuals like Vladimir Putin.
Imagine that distinction, how they think about the balance of forces between states.
And then the final point of critique I want to make against some people in my discipline, not the whole discipline I have to say to some people.
And the final point, because I think this gets wrong,
whether you can actually achieve strategic efficacy for military intervention in the world today.
If you think about the conflict purely in terms of this return of great power politics,
I think what you miss is the great power politics isn't very effective in achieving the aims of great powers.
And I think here I'm drawing on the work of my LSC colleague Mary Kaldor, who argues,
I think very correctly that military intervention overseas isn't effective in bringing about what we can refer to as compelling,
as compelling a state to behave in a particular way.
So then the second so that's the first point I want to make in my,
my first 5 minutes and the war that the way I want to get across that critique of how we think about the war of Ukraine.
And then so if it's not about great power politics, well, what's going on here and here,
I want to argue that it's better to see the war against Ukraine as a sign of the
fragmentation of world order that's taking place on lots of different levels.
One level, I think, is the level of ideas, of ideology, a kind of discursive level,
where that's where there's a much greater fragmentation of identities.
And within that context, within that frame, there's a rise of ethno nationalism, authoritarianism in many states all over the world,
and that Putin's Russia has seen one of the most extreme examples of this wider trend to authoritarian ization.
The second part of this fragmentation that picks up on what Alex was saying
earlier is that the world is going through a period of economic transition.
So the paradigm of free market neo liberalism has displaced significantly and in fact is being inverted.
So, you know, whereas 20 or 30 years ago, big corporations were asking the state to get out of their lives as much as possible,
leave them alone so that they could get on with the task of making money.
That's no longer the case. The paradigm has shifted really quite significantly because now corporations are interested in what states can do for them.
One buzzword that's often used is de-risking.
How do you reduce the risks of the investments that we make?
The corporations are obsessed with talking about security considerations and geopolitics in for their investments in this new world order.
And what this is a sign of broadly is that markets are becoming much, much more dependent upon states.
Then there's a related aspect to this, too, which is to do with environmental change,
which obviously this is part of the economic transition, which I think is driving this fragmentation.
Part of the reason that corporations are so interested in de-risking their investments is
because of the extraordinary ecological threats that the world is facing all the time.
And that, again, is making politics and political security a more and more important consideration for capital.
And then there's this other aspect that I think you really see in the civic response to the war against Ukraine,
that if you think of the war just in terms of what's happening in Ukraine,
you're going to miss out on all of the transboundary connections that are part and parcel of Ukrainians everyday resistance to the invasion.
One of my colleagues in East Carolina, Jessica Shaw at your Colonial University,
has been studying the extraordinary civic response in Poland to the challenge of migration.
And this isn't just a question of the humanitarian considerations for migrants in Poland, though,
of course, that's very, very important to make sure that the refugees are well looked after.
It's also about the self activity of Ukrainian civil society organisations inside Poland and how they're interacting with their homeland,
whether that's raising money for humanitarian relief that is then going back to Ukraine or also it has to be said,
raising money for the Ukrainian military directly through crowdfunding platforms to support the war effort.
This is all this is all part and parcel of this sort of fragmented picture.
And in a way, migration and diasporic links are a feature of this sort of globalised.
Well, this fragmented, globalising world that we've grown used to.
So each of those trends boundary levels, ideas, ecology, economic linkages, civic mobilisation and shaping how states respond to the war itself.
And this certainly leads into, I think, if you like, opportunities of this global fragmentation.
Maybe there's an opportunity in this new environment for progressive economic paradigm change.
Maybe there's opportunities within this fragmented environment for developing
sustainable peace strategies that address in different ways each of these levels.
Perhaps a new internationalism, we might call it.
But of course, there are also extraordinary dangers, and we would be foolish not to emphasise those.
In Ukraine,
I think the principal danger lies in the intersection of economics and security and how those two elements are interacting with one another.
My fear is that the economic situation in Ukraine is so negative, with around one in three people looking for work,
unable to find it, that a certain state that the society might has a risk of some form of fragmentation or breakdown,
and that would create an environment in which the Ukrainian resistance loses its kind of civic character,
its democratic character, potentially, or finds it much harder to sustain that civic democratic character.
Unfortunately, in the fragmented world in which we're living in, we have many,
many examples of conflicts that go through this process of fragmentation and then become very,
very difficult to stop, especially when lots and lots of groups emerge that have in one way or another,
a interest in perpetuating a cycle of violence, perhaps as a means of survival and so on.
So this is a clear risk at the same time.
And with that economic exhaustion, we also, I think, could say equally on the Russian side, but for slightly different reasons.
And this conventional war, this high intensity conventional war, very different to the conflicts that my colleagues on piece rep peace rep study.
This high intensity conventional war may lead to a situation where both sides lose the ability in one way or another to continue to fight the war.
On the Russian side, that would not be due to domestic economic exhaustion,
but the impact of sanctions in its ability to procure the high end manufacture of high tech
weaponry and the high tech weaponry that it needs to sustain the tanks that it's using and losing,
it has to be said in the conflict itself. With that, exhaustion comes a clear risk, very clear risk of violent escalation.
That poses a question, a challenge, of course, for peacemaking.
So then in the final guess, the final remark and all conclude, I don't know if I was successful on my 10 minutes.
I suspect not, but I think that was more like 15.
So say the relationship. So, yes, so I think any any peace in Ukraine, we have to put at the forefront the question of peace with justice,
not peace at any cost, and for a sustainable peace to have to be achieved.
That has to be a recognition of a peace that's in combat.
It compatible, excuse me, with international law, recognising territorial integrity,
the principles of the rule of law system, and the principles of sovereign equality and democracy.
Thank you. Thanks so much.
We have we have time for one question because I shall allow time for one question if there is one.
Yeah, right. Yeah. It's only getting useful, but a flawed suggestion.
One of the opportunities could be a new specialism.
Could you expand on that slightly? And that's just an international is the way to turn the spirit of the United Nations and its ambitions,
particularly among the smaller countries, because we lost the war, I think.
Yes, I agree. And I think if there's been if there's been one positive in this terrible, terrible war,
it has been the extraordinary strong support in the United Nations General Assembly for the fundamental principles of that international order.
I mean, I think sometimes supporters of Ukraine, I mean, in the global solidarity movement, mistakenly and I think counterproductive.
Counterproductive. Lee downplayed the support that Ukraine has internationally.
Actually, you see this in a lot of the discourse around African states.
There have been many African states that have made passionate speeches at the
General Assembly to uphold the fundamental principles of the international order,
that this is a question of sovereign equality, territorial integrity and so on.
And Ghana is one good example. Kenya is another, and indeed only one state has voted with Russia, Eritrea.
So I think one of the things that we're trying to get off the ground at LSC is to create much more
international dialogues between civic movements and states and in in Africa and the Ukrainians themselves.
Our recent start to this what we have a webinar series called the Russia Ukraine Dialogues where we did a really good session, I think,
with the Ukrainian ambassador for South Africa who really understands the sensitivities of the issue and you can find it online.
It was a great discussion, I think really underlines the strength of support that Ukraine has in Africa.
So be careful in terms of how you talk up Russian disinformation operations in Africa, in the Bognor group and everything.
All of those things are true. They're happening, but it's not the whole picture.
And it's vital that we give visibility to democratic internationalists, civic Africans as well.
So much of it is shifting in holistic view to start a session.
Next speaker is Brooks Newmark, who is founder of Angels for Ukraine, and he's going to tell us his story.
He is a doctoral student here in Oxford, a former member of parliament in the U.K.
Hand straight over to you. Thank you. Okay.
Well, thank you for inviting me. Yes, I am a student here, a very mature student that I could be talking,
I think probably for the little section Ruth Lentz could going to be speaking in, which is student led initiatives.
But I thought I would sort of tell my story of it because it is an initiative
in a country I really didn't know and have no background in doing what I did.
You know, so my story is really about being a social entrepreneur in a war zone.
And when I think of being an entrepreneur, which is what I was in my previous life before politics, it was about making money.
But being an entrepreneur is also about looking for opportunities out there to do something that maybe other people aren't doing.
And so when I say I'm a social entrepreneur,
I went into a war zone figuring out how could I be helpful in a way that maybe other people aren't being helpful?
And so I had just finished my field research case tonight in Rwanda, where I'm looking at education policy in Rwanda on February 24th.
And I saw a post on Instagram by a friend of mine who was on the Polish border with
a bus and was moving people away from the refugee centres further into Europe.
And I was supposed to be going scuba diving, but I cancelled my scuba diving and I said to my friend,
Can I come and join you for four days just to try and help out, see what I can do?
And so I went out there, changed my clothes from warm to getting dealing with cold weather.
And I went out there and, you know, we were shuttling people away and I stayed a bit longer.
I was there for two weeks and we were moving people away.
But one of the stories I kept hearing about was that people were charging people a lot of money to get away from the war zone,
particularly from around Kiev. So my friend, who's Latvian, had to go back to Riga.
So I said to him, Can you find me three buses because I want to go into Ukraine.
So he said, Sure, but I'm not letting you have my quarter of €1,000,000 buses.
I'll find you three second hand buses from Lithuania. So I got these three buses he sent to a friend with me who spoke, I'm going to say Russian.
He didn't speak Ukrainian. And so we sort of went in and I went in to around Kiev,
and we were taking people away from the war zone to the border back to where I initially started.
And over the next few weeks, as the Russians were pushed away, we found that we were sort of less busy.
And so then the next thing I heard about, there were a lot of people getting away from Mariupol.
So the bus drivers I had, which were from Lithuania, didn't know the roads.
So I figured out I had to contact the National Bus Company and I figured they needed work.
So I contacted one of the national bus companies and I said, okay,
I want to go down to his operation because there are a lot of people down there who are getting away from Mariupol.
And can I have some buses and a bus driver and how much would you charge me?
And so I negotiated a deal and which, by the way, I was sort of funding myself at this stage.
And I started moving people away from who are from Mariupol and taking them up to leave it, which was safer for them over the next month or two,
when unfortunately the Russians then got control of Mariupol, there were less people to move away.
So then I had to go to the east and I decided to go to Kharkiv because I was hearing
that there were a lot of people in some of the smaller villages who couldn't get away.
They couldn't move, they had no money and no means to get away and were under constant bombardment.
So then I had when I went out there and it was difficult to find a bus driver who would come with me because I'm going into a war zone.
So I said, Fine, you know, I'll go in. You know who's coming with me?
And I found two bus drivers to come with me with a bus.
And so once they saw that this crazy bridge was willing to go into a war zone with buses, I got more bus drivers to actually come with me.
But then I had two other problems that I was facing.
Well, that was the first problem, was getting bus drivers going to a war zone.
The second problem was, of course, because I was doing this for free, a lot of the people didn't trust me.
They thought that perhaps I was taking them into Russia because this is for free and maybe this was a secret way to take them into Russia.
So unfortunately, I then had to charge them some money.
So I charge them 1050, which is the equivalent of ten P and they felt, okay, this must be real because they're charging me for money.
This has to be real and they're going to take me to safety.
So I started I spent a lot of time I probably spent about six months in the east part of the country
around ISM and a lot of the other villages around there just moving more and more people away.
By this time, I had 20 buses that I was working with and paying for.
And I think by by probably the middle of the summer,
I had moved about 11,000 people with mainly women and children away from the frontline villages that were getting bombed.
And then I had a massive challenge. I then the local intelligence, the SBU, contacted me.
They said, you know, we want to try and get a thousand people through a particular checkpoint, but we need somebody who will move them.
Will you do that? So I said, sure. So this was July.
And so I'm I drive out because at this point I'm in Libya.
So I drive across the country. I'm supposed to organise this on a monday in July, arrive at 630,
I get a phone call saying I'm afraid we may have to call off the evacuation of a thousand people because the Army have laid landmines.
They lay mines, rather, on the 500 metres between the Russian checkpoint and the Ukrainian checkpoint.
So I said, this is ridiculous. I'd come all the way out here to try and move these people.
I said, I want those mines moved by tomorrow or figure out a way we can get a path through the mines.
But I will be there 730 in the morning played. So I went to the bus station in Kharkiv and there were 20 municipal buses.
I think these lime green buses there, they were ambulances and they're all ready to go.
And they said, We've sorted your problem, Mr. Neumeier, don't worry. So I'm driving.
So I send the buses off ahead of me and I'm busy following them.
I'm about 10 minutes behind them and I'm driving down some dirt road and I hear this loud bang and I think,
[INAUDIBLE], you know, I blown a tire in my car. Have I got a spare tyre?
So I say to Igor, I think we blown a tyre.
And he said, No, no, no. That was just a mortar bomb that landed seven metres, 70 metres behind us.
So we sort of sped along.
We arrived at the checkpoint and the head of the army in that place said about a hundred people there sort of pointed his finger to me,
said, come with me. And he took me around the corner from the checkpoint.
And they had actually moved these mines to imagine the road on both sides where they had moved the mines to this side.
Now, I know the difference between what is a landmine, which is you can trigger by stepping on it,
and an anti-tank mine, which is quite big, but you could flick a switch at the side and literally lift it and move it.
So they had cleared a path for me of 500 metres, so.
So that was one problem resolved. And I said, Why did you lay these mines when I knew they were coming?
But we thought they were Russians were going to use the people as a human shield.
So we wanted didn't want the tanks to come across following these people.
So the next problem was they then cancelled it again on me saying, well, we're worried that Russians will infiltrate with these people.
So at this stage, I'm sort of standing there wondering, you know, how how am I going to persuade this guy?
This general suddenly turns up. He sort of is like a Norman Schwarzkopf.
I don't know if you guys remember him, look alike with a ponytail and huge guy.
And he comes up to me and he's sort of curious that this Brit is they're trying to sort of organise all this.
So the very first question is he's worried about Boris Johnson,
who is stepping down at this point, and that is our Britain going to still be supporting us.
So, yes. Don't worry, the British are going to still support. And I said, But what?
You could do me a favour and tell that captain over there to please let the people I saw.
I don't know how many people or the Russian checkpoint, but if they are willing to walk through a minefield.
I think we should let them do it anyway. He barks and order and they do.
And they start coming through and we get the first to go through.
And what was extraordinary, it was sort of dystopian because they were, you know, old people pulling one bag along.
There was a lady with two Alsatian dogs. There was another lady carrying a cat with her bag.
There was a woman who had pushed her mother 15 kilometres in a wheelchair.
I said, Why did you why couldn't you drive her to the checkpoint?
At least the Russians stopped us and said, If I want to go to the checkpoint, you have to get out and push your mother in the wheelchair.
And so at the end of the day, we we ended up getting within three and a half hours,
1015, mainly women and children and elderly people through this checkpoint.
And this is sort of one and certainly one of my abiding memories of my time there.
By the time September came, most civilians that I could evacuate, we had evacuated.
And so I did a pivot, as any entrepreneur would, because there's no more business there for me.
And so I started focusing on evacuating amputees, and there weren't enough ambulances to to take them from the front line hospitals to get treatment.
And the problem with many of the hospitals in Ukraine was they couldn't deal with severe trauma victims.
So then I started moving amputees to the Polish border to just of and getting them airlifted to hospitals,
mainly in Germany, who could deal with trauma patients.
And my final pivot came when the weather started getting cold because the Ukrainians were doing an amazing job,
particularly in Kharkiv region, where I spent a lot of time pushing people out of a lot of these small villages.
So there were a lot of occupied villages, but that were probably three quarters bombed, but people wanted to go back there.
And so I then started bringing warm clothing or blankets and a lot of humanitarian aid.
And by the time sort of my anniversary had come up in mid February, we moved,
I realised over 31,000 women and children away from frontline villages to safety in western Ukraine.
And that in essence is my story. And thank you for listening and if you've got any questions for that.
12 minutes. Good. You. Well, if anyone has got one burning question, John Boehner, how would you pay for it all?
Okay. Well, I paid because I was a hardcore capitalist before I went into politics.
So I put about a quarter of a million of my own money in.
And then I went to about 25 friends of mine who I was at business school with and raised about another three quarters of a million.
So. So I raised so I moved about 31,000 people for about $1,000,000.
But I had no central costs. So any central costs I paid for.
So every penny that went in and I did this, there were just three of us doing this.
We had no organisation or anything on the ground.
And what I would say to the very large NGOs out there is, you know,
you can do things effectively on a shoestring with not huge overheads if you really put a little bit of business practice,
which is what I had into this. The second advantage I had was because I'd been in politics, I knew the importance of working with local governments.
So I ended up setting up ten virtual hubs around the country where I worked with each of the mayors in everywhere,
from Kiev down to Venice, down to Nikolayev, Odessa, Kherson, all the way up through to Kharkiv, Sumi and so on.
So I have ten hubs there, but no organisation. They're virtual hubs, but I certainly now know Ukraine probably better than most Ukrainians.
Thank you. Well, thank. Well of course we have Dr. Mani Howard.
We're delighted to welcome now in our north program this morning.
Some time to. And you have some PowerPoint slides so the student.
Money is a so I lost my place.
Departamento lecturer in Russian and East European politics here in Oxford.
Two teachers in both the Department of Politics and International Relations and the School of Global and Area Studies.
And we welcome you very warmly to speak about understanding Ukraine grass roots.
Morning. Great. Well, good afternoon, everyone.
It's nice to see so many faces.
I've just come in from up the road and at another conference where we've been talking about Ukraine for the last two days.
So my head is sort of everywhere. But what I noticed at the conference that I just came from and something that actually I think Brooke did
a fantastic job in his talk was sort of the idea that Ukrainians are missing from this conversation.
And I'm going to do right now a little bit of what Luc just did is kind of push back against
my disciplines and question where the voices of Ukrainians are in these conversations,
and especially within political science and international relations,
but also within many of these policy circles and media accounts, the absence of Ukrainians is very clear,
at least for me as a member of the Diaspora and as someone who's been working on Ukraine for the last ten years,
I've spent a great deal of my life in the country. And so for me, elevating the voice of Ukrainians is very important.
And I'm really glad to see not only many individuals on the program today, but many Ukrainians and some of my own collaborators in the audience.
So I think that these voices are really important and something that we really need to listen to whenever we are talking about peace in any capacity,
sustainable, even in a temporary sense, but especially in the country going forward.
The reason that I say this is because these are the images that have been dominating much of our media since the 24th of February 2022.
This is a map that was from the 24 February. And as you can see, Russia invaded Ukraine in many directions.
Images associated with this have really been dominating our media, but they have changed over time.
And here's a map. This is from mid-March.
So it's not necessarily the most accurate one, but it shows that we have seen new developments over throughout the country in the last year and a bit.
But still, we are still thinking about Ukraine kind of through this lens.
Many of us in this audience probably now know a lot more about Ukraine,
including at the regional level, you know, probably where Kharkiv is, maybe it caps on multiple, etc.
From these maps that we're seeing in the news, we're also seeing many of these images, many of which Brooke's just painted for us.
Right. These women and children, these elderly people fleeing the country on foot by bus, many of them in buildings that have been attacked.
They have been these these have been very much the images of what we've seen above Ukraine in the last year.
But also there have been other discussions dominating social media, especially Instagram and Twitter,
due to Ukrainians creativity and using social media for their cause.
And we've seen some of these images, we've seen memes in particular this one with the tractor in the tank,
as well as just cities being liberated like Pettersen and the nationalist expressions.
When these cities have been liberated, when these people are able to take back and move back to their cities and homes.
But with this, we don't really know much about what Ukrainians think or what they're experiencing amidst the war,
except for the accounts of individuals as they're leaving. But we can't.
And as political scientists, we have very significant difficulties in trying to research the country while the war is ongoing.
However, it is so important for us to know what they think in order for us to address or to help Ukraine in any capacity.
So for this reason, last year, in February,
I received the John Bell Fund Research Grant from the University for a completely different project in Ukraine.
I had the funds and believed it was no longer ethical to do the research that I had done.
And so what I did is I contacted a think tank in Ukraine who I was previously in touch with,
and I asked them what they thought was the most necessary for Oxford researchers to do at that time.
For them, there was no public opinion polling happening in the country and they believed it was really important to for us
to know how Ukrainians saw the war but saw themselves and especially the foreign policy ambitions of the people.
So with this well, I'll get back to this second as a scholar of mine or a colleague of mine,
that if I decided to run a public opinion survey with this and also find motivating our stance was much of an.
Medium that had been dominating the discussions about the war, often framing the war as though it started on the 24th of February.
But forgetting that this was something that had been happening for nine years and for many Ukrainians, many of them in this room,
we can attest to the fact that 2014 was a significant turning point for Ukrainians,
not only from the Euromaidan in 2013, 2014, but the annexation of Crimea and then the beginning of the war in Donbas.
The Ukraine, the Russia Ukraine war was an international and has been an international conflict backed by Russian separatists,
by Russia and also Ukrainians. And it's very, very complex and there's many different nuances here.
But it's not just been or has not just been a 12 month conflict.
It's been a 12 month plus eight year conflict or now even if 13 or 14 months plus eight years.
This is something that is really important for any conversation about peace
and that this is not something new that has come about in the last few years,
especially in the eyes of Ukrainians. This has been happening at a very local level.
I worked with families of war and orphan children for five years in the country.
And this the horrors, the atrocities and these stories of trauma are very entrenched in very much a new
generation of people who are now have been living with conflict for going on ten years.
This is really important for us to remember when we're thinking about peace. I threw up some numbers here.
Just estimates for us to remind ourselves that there have been significant losses.
This is not at all to undermine what we've seen since February,
but just as a reminder that these losses are not new and they have been ongoing for a significant,
significant period of time, and that there have also been many,
many people internally displaced and also displaced within Europe since 2014 and not only since 2022.
Still we've seen significant Ukrainian resistance.
And these are just some very simple visual for us to remind ourselves that when Russia
did invade in 2022 and there was a significant imbalance between Ukraine state,
especially within its military, its combat capabilities and Russia.
But with this and as we've seen, Ukraine has continued to defend itself despite the significant losses which we don't often talk about.
And this is a really important reality. We do talk often about the Russian losses, that there have been significant losses on the Ukrainian side.
Yes, they were.
And they began this counteroffensive in February 2022 with a significant imbalance in just inequality, but yet they have continued to fight.
Despite that, still, it's important for us to know what Ukrainians are thinking.
So my colleague Karl and I, at the time we ran a public opinion survey in 11 regions of Ukraine,
only the 11 regions we were able to get ethics approval at the time because they were only under
Ukraine's control and they hadn't been directly affected within the first immediate months.
And so those are the places where they're highlighted in red. These are the regions that we had were able to access.
What we are doing with this think tank is trying to compare their data that they are they've been collecting from February 2021,
a year before the invasion, December 2021, so three months before the invasion and then days before the invasion in 2022 in February.
And so I'm going to go through just some brief graphs for you to understand this.
Again, these this survey particular was conducted in May, so just about three months after Russia's invasion.
So the first question that had previously been asked in February 2022, before the invasion,
was, who do you think is primarily responsible for the growing threat? Because this is what it was at the time.
As you can see, the numbers there are significant in Russia. But when the question was asked again in May 2022,
we see a greater or significantly growing increase in terms of it being the leadership of Russia and also the citizens of Russia.
This question is important because especially in the first few months post-invasion,
the rhetoric within the international community was very much about NATO expansion and EU expansion,
why that's who is guilty and that was responsible for this.
Yet in the eyes of Ukrainians, it was not that. As you can see here, it was actually in their eyes, it was Russia and Russian civil society.
Again, similar question asking that your interpretation of the events we see here that the war is a consequence of Russia's foreign
and aggressive foreign policy position rather than the consequence of perhaps NATO expansion or Ukraine joining the EU or.
Sorry. And joining me to a similarly and I think this is a quite interesting one, the changing views and allyship.
So this is again from February 2022 before the invasion to May 2022,
we see significant growing support for it at the UK, the US, the UK, the US and Poland.
Again, this is not particularly surprising.
Poland is a very obvious reason and the help that they have given them so substantially the US being a significant ally.
But at this time Boris Johnson had been the first prime minister to visit Ukraine since the invasion.
And so. We can't really deduce whether this was actually Ukrainian spelled or because Boris
Johnson had been so active in the news and he had been the first Western leader there.
In any case, it is interesting to see such significant growing support.
And if we were and I will be running this survey again in May, we will see what's been happening in the last year.
Another interesting one is just seeing the significant growth in support for Ukrainian support for joining the EU going up.
I believe it's 13 percentage points and which has gone up.
There's very much support even though it was only in 11 regions is the same finding that we several other teams of scholars,
including a team based at Manchester, have found with more regions included is that there has been, if anything,
the war has actually increased Ukrainian support for joining the EU and arguably NATO's,
although we don't have that question in ours and this is again from that same group of scholars,
they've also seen a growing support for democracy and support of Ukrainians believing in Ukraine becoming a democratic state.
This is in my data, but I thought it was interesting and important to show because this is often a question that I'm asked.
You talk about this data and Belarus is also something we often think about.
What is Belarus's position here? Again, prior to the invasion,
it actually made Ukrainians who suggested that there's a growing fear and that
Belarus is playing a role in this and more so than they had prior to the invasion.
This might change now, and when I asked the same survey again, we might see a different result because Belarus hasn't been as active,
or at least is a location in which Russia can attack Ukraine.
However, they still have not been neutral. They have been active in this.
And so it's hard to say whether this will hold or whether we might see some changes here.
Finally, what I think is really important with this survey is around concessions,
because this is also a conversation that at the time in the first three months,
but especially now, we are still talking about what will Ukraine give up in order for peace?
What is what is Ukraine willing to concede?
As you can see in this survey, I mean, Ukrainian said 78% of them said they will not support any concessions.
I'm still within this question. My colleague and I felt that it was a little bit too vague and that 78% is a very strong position.
But we wanted to tease that out a little bit more to see if there was perhaps anything in that.
So we added another and another question in there.
And what we can see is that the only or the only bit of movement would really
be around humanitarian issues and specifically around humanitarian corridors.
If you remember back in May, in April 2022, we saw a significant number of attacks on humanitarian corridors as Ukrainians are being evacuated.
So this does align with what was happening on the ground, and I'm sure Brooks can attest to that.
There is significant fear and I do believe that this is where Ukrainians opposition came from.
Nevertheless, this really prompted us to think about what else is important to Ukrainians, because if we're going to talk about concession,
we also need to know what and how they feel about their country, their political autonomy, especially their territorial integrity.
So this led to a second, second conjoint survey experiment led by, again, my colleague and also another colleague at Nuffield.
I'm only going to go into this very briefly, but really the message that I want to take away is in the next slide,
as you can see, we were able to add some additional regions.
And again, these are only regions that individuals had not or that were under Ukrainian control.
And we only surveyed individuals who had not fled or left their homes since Russia's invasion.
This is sort of an understanding of that's how we chose our sample.
Any of these regions, these are the initial were the initial text where we had selected Sumi some high up there.
Sumi was originally in our sample, but during data collection we actually had to drop the sample because individuals there were so
sceptical of our enumerators on the ground thinking that they were acting on behalf of Russia.
So if anything of this amongst many stories disarticulated are challenges of any research being conducted in Ukraine at this.
I'm not even speaking about the ethics and potential re traumatisation that come with conducting research.
In any case, though, we were able to gather significant data and what we found in this through our experiment
is essentially that Ukrainians are not trading off the costs and benefits of war,
as we've seen in every single context in which we can find in the literature,
in that there is not a threshold of civilian or military deaths or even a nuclear strike that would deter them from continuing to fight what we found.
And 79% of individuals said that first and foremost, for them in controlling their political system,
controlling their government was first and foremost important.
And the second is that the territory of their country, including Donbas and Crimea, are fundamental to them.
And that they are willing to continue to fight until these are sustained.
And this is really important for us as political scientists, as policymakers.
Anyone really interested in the discussion to know that if Ukrainians are not going to fight,
I'm thinking about or giving them the conversation or suggestion that they should negotiate is off the table and that we need to think
about creative ways to work with Ukrainians if this is how definitively their position is still and I want to end on a positive note,
because I think that this is a conversation.
It's not entirely bleak. And I think Brooke highlighted this, too, in talking about the local level.
We have seen significant grassroots support in a way that perhaps would be unexpected in times of war.
This is again from my colleagues in Manchester, but we can see a significant number of individuals engaging in grassroots organisations,
donating funds, cooking, helping the military in many different ways, not just fighting on the front lines.
This is it continues to grow in their numbers here. They say 61% in the top blue, but it's even more in the more contemporary days.
The second survey was in May 2022, and they've continued to run polls since then.
In addition, in my own work, I've been looking at you expressions of the nation and other active,
but perhaps different ways in which Ukrainians have been expressing their nation and fighting for Ukraine.
These are photos of music, the express underground in bomb shelters across the country.
We have professional violin players, for example, playing to keep the morale in the spirits up.
You know, trumpeters, we also see this are incredible art being painted on to the sides of the bomb shelters.
The one on the left is by children in Ternium. As you can see through the colours,
there is a sense of nationalism as expressions to support and fight for your nation, even perhaps in a different way.
Finally, these are just another example, including a famous Ukrainian musician who's travelled across the country.
This is in Kharkiv singing and really boosting the morale of citizens.
So this reminds us that there is much more happening than those images I showed you at the beginning.
And with that, I just want to leave us sort of with four final questions that perhaps can stimulate discussion later.
One, you know, how do we account for Ukraine is agency. We're talking about the war.
As you can tell. I believe this is fundamental to how do we talk about Ukrainians, agency or agency.
Talking about peace because Ukrainians need to be elevated in these discussions as well.
Three What does peace look like for Ukrainians when Russia will be and is always going to be Ukraine's neighbour?
How do we understand that and have Ukrainians understand that fundamentally?
And finally, keeping Ukrainians views in mind? What does support for Ukraine actually look like?
With that, I thank you for your time and hope we can continue this conversation later.
Thank you so much. Can we take one question and could ask the next speaker to come on up, though?
We're just answering that. If there is one thing I was watching the.
Question is if that's the view of ordinary Iranians, how do they see a peaceful future?
Is that a defeat of Russia or is this going to be a question that many Iranians in this room, I think, that are better able to speak on this?
I'm sorry. I'm so used to teaching where I walk around the think a you can my student.
I think there are several Ukrainians in this room I think are probably in a more appropriate position to speak.
However, I was on a panel yesterday with two Ukrainians, one being an academic and one being a journalist who's been on the front lines.
And we talked about this question of what is winning,
what is peace actually look like for them fundamentally is pushing Russia back to the 2000 or so to the February 24 borders at least.
And beyond that, pushing back to the 2014 borders would be ideal.
But they said, in their view, they would be willing to accept at least the return of everything else ever done by us.
And then Donbas could be a different conversation and at least the academic who has come from Ukraine to Oxford just for this conference,
he said that in his view, there will need to be some other discussion around the future of Donbass in particular,
and that it is separate from the larger conversation about the future of Ukraine.
I think. Yeah.
They're just world changing. The part with our next speaker is a Ukrainian voice.
Right. Yeah, that's another book that is. And then I see you in the school of Anthropology doing a lot of work.
But before coming to it, she was a journalist reporting on all this various aspects.
Very excited to hear what you have to say.
Okay. Thank you. Okay.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, everyone for being here.
So my name is Yaroslav, a booster and indeed I, I had a word for a couple of years in Ukrainian media and NGO Sector four before coming to Oxford.
I've been working in Brussels for almost half a year covering agrifood policy and before that I was part of elite sport in team system,
which was one of the key investigative journalism media in Ukraine.
So therefore,
I think it would be fair to begin with saying that the position I will talk about work of media during the Russian-Ukrainian war would be the one of
someone who I knew would be the one of someone who actually was part of Ukrainian newsroom with the beginning of the full scale Russian invasion.
And yeah, and basically I think that I will begin with outlining the points of my speech, the first Ukrainian journalism and who are they?
Who are those people who are coming, who are working actually in Ukraine,
having more Ukrainian international journalists than a full scale Russian invasion through different lenses?
And this is like partly what a previous article was touching in her in her talks,
like who speaks on behalf of who, who has the agency to talk on behalf of Ukraine?
And actually, do Ukrainian journalists have the same scale of legitimacy talking about conflict happening within their country,
as do international media, talking about that conflict and a couple of lessons to learn and points to
think about again as a person who work in Ukrainian and international media.
Yeah. Talking today. Okay.
So first of all, one of the things that was very present in Ukrainian media sphere was like one this is a question I often get like,
were you expecting the beginning of the full scale invasion to happen to February 24th?
While the short answer would perhaps be no. And before that, as a as a part of our newsroom,
we were doing a number of trainings actually on first aid on and I remember that it was like partly and a bit.
Yeah, that we're actually love jokes about like wearing bullet-proof vests.
And I can't say that we actually did perceive what was about to happen in, you know,
like as a serious thought because before that there were a couple of media reports saying that,
yeah, Russia's going to invade Ukraine like in December, then like later than in January.
And so it was partly like jokes, but mainly made mainly jokes as like you can't leave in a constant stress.
So we were preparing but not it was not something that we were expecting.
So at the beginning of OC, at the beginning of the full scale Russian invasion,
what was happening is actually that there were a lot of journalists who had
a very different expertise and very different spheres they were working at.
So you had like in any other country, you had also war work correspondents who were covering war for the last like 8 hours before,
but it was not the majority of journalists. So it was not like professionals, trained professionals who knew how to do all this thing,
who knew how to wear all this like bullet-proof vests, who knew all the rules and regulations about working with army and with press officers?
Actually, yeah, like people who would work as press officers, it was not existent because.
Yeah, because it was just just the journalistic field is functions any other country.
So again, we have like investigative journalists, like the media when I worked where like some of these journalists did have experience covering war.
But mainly, again, as I say, it was not like all that constituted their profession.
And what we had to face was basically overnight having a conversation on the whole at the general meeting of the whole newsroom actually talking,
okay, guys, what are we going to do now?
So as investigative media, we used to cover Bandera papers, Panama Papers, revealing crimes of top Ukrainian politicians.
And here we have the full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.
And what are we going to do now? So what's our position now? We're not war reporters.
This is not what we can do. And well, as Anna began that she's she's the chief editor of Please for information one her interviews.
You are never ready. You never register that your world can be destroyed in some stupid way.
And this is this is true. So basically, what we're not preparing for doing any of these things.
And during that night, we actually switched to two directions of our war work.
So one of them was covering war. We actually had a couple of people who put on old.
It's like Vasco had like a bit more experience in in having more before who want to actually report on the places in Kiev where,
where there were first like, um, strikes, rocket strikes.
And this was like one of the possible directions.
The second one was actually was doing what we could do using osint methods to identify Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine.
So the thing is that many of these people, they have like social media and just using, again, like offline methods,
like open sources, you can you can identify these people for further using of this information within international courts.
So and what was happening then, which was quite unprecedented for Ukrainian media,
that system was given trainings to the prosecutor's office to actually how to use
this methods to identify Russian soldiers fighting on the territory of Ukraine.
Then again, like part of the part of the journalistic sphere, switched to countering Russian propaganda because it was coming up as like insanely.
And this is actually interesting because in Ukraine many people understand Russian.
And when you actually face it and when you actually have to face it everyday,
it's like you get you have to deal with Russian propaganda in some regions of Ukraine where it's like stronger against some Russian speaking region,
more more Russian speaking regions in Ukraine. And this all came together.
And I would say that at the beginning it was just basically quite a mess in the sense that we were trying to understand how to figure,
like how how to work, how to move on and with.
As things for developing. I would say that multimedia they got their niches within covering this this this for so for example
one of the one of the media projects you CRANOR Instead of doing our reports from actually talking
about Ukrainian traditions Ukrainian culture that was like mainly in focus this which more to again
like counter counter disinformation projects and explaining more about what is happening in Ukraine,
why it is happening, like why we are not ready to give up, why some Russian narratives should just like go away.
And of course, projects like Stop Fake, which is like one of the key hub, basically.
Yes. Just from the from the names like Fakes Project is also functioning in Ukraine
and has been on for years now and they just kept on like with their work.
So this is like another another like direction in which things were moving.
Also, we, we have this quite impressive thing which was like one channel 24 was for seven like news coverage,
which basically were a couple of t TV channels, interestingly, because they were owned by different oligarchs and mainly Ukrainian media.
TV media there are not their main private.
So we haven't this has been a broadcaster.
A broadcaster which is like, yeah, public broadcaster, but otherwise they came all together and they started covering war,
which is like another in a sense Ukrainian as the way it is perceived in Ukraine.
When a said quite well, it's like a part of Ukrainian propaganda that is happening and it's also ruled by government.
So I mean, it's like another voice that actually emerged within this news coverage and this is not the direction in which things went moving.
What was interesting was when international journalists actually started coming to Ukraine and there were cases when,
for instance, my colleague, one colleagues went to the places where the rocket has just like stroke in the residential building.
So it's a total mess. You see people who just lost their homes were just lost their families.
They're scared. They're like over there. And it's it's a shock.
And then you see a bunch of international journalists who actually come to the
spot and they like apparently this is not their first time covering these things.
They know each other quite well and they are like in a very friendly way, just chatting, like walking around just as doing, doing their job,
which is actually very different from what it is for Ukrainians because it
also involves some level of personal attachment to things that you will see.
And there were quite a lot of like tension connected to that in the beginning because while again you see people coming through very personal stories,
very personal trauma, and then at the same time, you just see people working there, which is also fair.
But yes, and it's actually quite interesting the the point that I face have to face as as a journalist working in Brussels newsroom.
So there was one opinion piece that they let me write.
It was 500 words basically discussing why do ossification in Ukraine is not that straightforward.
So why it is not just let's prohibit everything Russian or in Russian like Russian, like written in Russian language.
So this is not just like such a such a straightforward process as sometimes it is depicted in media.
And it was quite interesting because there were other journalists who were covering Ukraine and their articles were reviewed by,
for instance, one, one editor like them, their department, and another like chief editor.
My opinion piece for five 500 words as a Ukrainian talking on behalf of Ukraine about Ukraine was reviewed by five different editors,
including a chief editor. And it was quite striking for me because I could understand why.
But actually, as they explained to me, while we expect from you to be more emotional, we expected from you condemnation.
We can't expect from you to be objective. Talking about your country and talking about anything is happening in your country.
Even though you are here, you are here in Brussels. You are reporting on many different issues.
We've seen you in work, but we still do not quite trust you in this respect.
So this is something that remained like, you know, it was not said straightforwardly, but I could understand, I could get it.
And this was just sounding like this was in the air.
And this is like another piece of reality that we had to face, which is basically, are you as a Ukrainian, are able to talk on behalf of Ukraine?
Will you be emotional or will you be actually objective and following all the journalistic standards?
And I was actually very curious about to compare like how Ukrainian and in.
National media. We're covering some of the key events.
And within my previous Masters Masters degree, I made a smaller content analysis.
So basically it was a comparison of a one week coverage.
It was of BBC and 6 p.m. since the discovery of Russian war crimes in Russia.
And actually, surprisingly, yes, the approach to visuals was different.
So BBC pictures were mainly like depicting are they destruction or they were hiding like the bodies while Ukrainian media that were quite open.
So sometimes it was like blurred bodies lying on the streets.
But what was actually interesting that BBC reports using words like atrocities,
using emotional, emotional evaluation of the events that were more common.
So Ukrainian Ukrainian suspended use for actually seeking more two facts.
If it was not a force like a specific town or like which is reports, which is it sort of includes some level of like personal, personal perspective.
But yeah, that was that was something very interesting for me.
And also what was quite striking that if you read Ukrainian reports, it's mainly like so here is the story of this person and we trusted.
But in BBC reports there were such phrases like we couldn't verify this story from three independent sources.
And the story they're talking about, for instance, is a story of a boy who saw his dad being shot on the street of a butcher.
So this leads actually to one of one of the other questions like, are the BBC standards appropriate in the fog of war?
Or like our journalistic standards in war coverage,
the same as they should be in as as they are in peace coverage and should should it be functioning in the same way?
And what positions should journalists take?
If you have one side, which is obviously perpetrator and another side which is which is a victim,
can we give the equal amount of time, an equal amount of space to both of them?
Can we can we just, like,
give it in the way that we would give like any other report and just try to balance thoughts or actually we have to provide more context.
Another thing that I well actually wanted to touch partly was how how us and them were actually shaped within this this environment,
because this is this is the picture that was, for instance, printed in like Financial Times depicting Ukrainian refugees.
And this is actually another picture from the same railway station.
And you could see the difference between them, like actually the way people frame like this perception of who Ukrainians are.
And other interesting thing were some of the some of the memories of my friends who said that, yeah,
we were in the queue in the border and there was a huge line of cars with the Ukrainians actually trying to cross the border.
And there was one one car with some people from Afghanistan, like friends of friends,
and they said that there was crew like there was a crew from some some international big international media was the beginning.
So and so you have imagine like 20 cars,
let's say like 100 cars on the border and one car with was like people from a different like ethnic background and then guess which car they pick.
So this is actually quite surprising in well, in how how this all was happening I could say that I'm talking from now the situation has changed.
So basically Ukrainian and Ukrainian journalists and Ukrainian opinion leaders,
they actually got some platforms like from one of Ukraine famous Ukrainian writers, Anton Chekhov.
He got an opinion piece in The New York Times.
You get you get this this platforms that actually where actually Ukrainians can can say how they see things.
But at the same time, this is something that we also have and we can't just like escape this questions and I feel like this
questions are actually to ask also in regard to other conflicts happening all around the world,
not just Ukraine like who talks on behalf of who and who decides like how to do big things and how things are depicted in general.
Okay. And one more thing that how also we have to take into account so Russia media the thing is that the perception of.
Russian media in international sphere and the forces in international journalism and the
Ukrainian journalism is quite different because what is happening in Ukraine is like,
again, as I said, there is this huge language barrier which makes us like to understand like what Russian propaganda propagandist messages are.
And we've also had a number of projects connected to revealing of Russian propaganda,
disinformation in Ukrainian media functioning for all all of these years.
But actually so so it's quite surprising that it's striking like the reaction in two different environments to things like this is more tangible.
Maybe you remember like she she's been Russian journalist for ages on one of the key Russian top channels.
And during one of the live translations, she just one.
There was this poster No War.
And she said that, yes, I've been working for so many years translating messages of Russian propaganda, but now I've changed.
And it was quite striking, like the reaction of the international community and Ukrainian community,
because international community was like, yes, this is amazing.
She made such a great claim. And and maybe indeed like it was it was it was huge like Chechen vote.
But what is happening in Russian media.
But on the other hand, Ukrainian mostly like Ukrainian, especially Ukrainian journalists, they took a very sceptical position saying that,
oh wait, but she's been working on Russian propaganda, this channel for like so many years, and now it is happening.
So this person has been actually part of this machine that has led to the situations that we have now.
And now, like she just goes, there was like this poster and gets a position in one of one of the German media and gets an offer of asylum in Europe.
And and she gets to report on events actually happening in Ukraine.
And she comes there as international correspondent, like, how come can we can we deal with that?
So there is another question that sometimes is is asked about Russian media and should we actually listen to what Russian media have to say?
And should Russia Russia today, which is again the question Russian channel that is present in many countries, should it be back?
Should or should we actually make it return?
And the big question is, like, again, when we get to talk about disinformation and manipulation,
to which extent is general public trying to to deal with this machine that has been on for years?
And to which extent will the general public be able to distinguish these messages if if they're not given that context,
if they're just basically exposed because this instrument of propaganda and again,
like another question that perhaps should be raised about accountability of Russian journalists, about the whole thing that is happening.
And the question is, again, it was phrased today as well about peace and but peace with which actually incorporates them being accountable,
accountable for what they were doing and what they have been reporting for.
Like here is again, like with case of Marina. Yeah, I think that is all from for me with with all these questions I'll be happy to discuss afterwards.
Yep. Thank you very much. Silver.
Thank you very much indeed. As time has slipped a little bit,
we may have to move the order a little bit because I think that Federica is coming in to get into the real like this.
That's okay. This is just for the record.
You want the email from him? Well, you're why wanted.
How do we get into this? I'm not sure. I just opened. So just trying to connect with New York and get to Federica.
Sandra, who is normally at the Blavatnik School here and is deputy director of Eli Institute for Ethics in a World of Conflict.
And we hope that she will be ready to do her input now on the international crimes going on in Ukraine.
Who can be held accountable and how?
Federico. Hello. I know.
I think we have to. Right.
Can every can everybody here I mean, one thing. Sorry, Fredricka.
We're going to put you on now as soon as you're ready. And we just need to make sure that the sound is just coming from my laptop into the auditorium.
Can you hear me? You can try to let me talk to that.
Just. Just bear with us for a moment. Okay.
Can you just do a count? One, two, three, four. No.
One, two, three, four. Can anybody hear that?
How much of your people are saying they can? There may be a better way to do it, but, um.
Let's do it like this for now. We've got the technician coming.
But let me try one more thing.
Okay, do. Sorry.
Don't know. This isn't a cable.
Cable should go through the door.
So that sort of. Okay, Fredricka, can you can you try starting now?
I'm just introduced. You want to come in here?
Okay. Can you hear me? Are we on?
You should be okay. It is very difficult for me to tell because I don't have eyes on the room.
So I just need your cue in terms of where to start. Okay.
Can you start now? As soon as you're ready. All right. Fantastic.
Thank you. And thank you to this piece for inviting me to speak.
I'm from Ukraine. I heard it's disturbing.
Your son. I'm not quite sure what caused it, but carry on.
All right. And I'm sorry.
I was just saying I'm sorry that I cannot be there in person because it's been a full programme and I'm sure three interesting discussion,
but I'm nevertheless grateful of the opportunity to be able to participate and to say discussion.
And I want to you and. Something you deserve.
Right. Okay. Carry on.
To provide an overview of the landscape and prospects for and accountability for international
crimes that are taking place in Ukraine as a result of Russia's military aggression.
And the reason why I want to focus on the prospects for accountability is precisely because this is something that
Ukraine itself has put front and centre as part of its whole system of response to the defence of its sovereignty,
independence and territorial integrity. And when we speak of international crimes, generally speaking, of international law violations,
that by your skill or gravity are so atrocious as to be considered crimes against the international community as a whole.
And these are most crimes, crimes against humanity, the crime of genocide and the crime of aggression, all of which seem at stake in Ukraine.
For over a year now, we've been watching in horror and see, frankly,
as Russian forces poured over Ukrainian borders, rain missiles on Ukrainian cities,
occupied, plundered and brutalised civilians in what is one of the most clear cut case of aggression in recent history.
In international law. The crime of aggression.
Fundamentally, the large scale and unprovoked use of military force against territorial integrity and political independence of another state,
which, in the case of Russia's aggression against Ukraine,
actually began already in 2014 with the economic station of Crimea and also the February 22 full scale invasion,
which was initiated with the overt intent to capture more of Ukraine's territory
and to topple its elected government certainly took matters to a new level.
And in the years since then, large scale combat operations have been taking place.
Ukraine has managed to reverse 54% of Russia's initial real gains, though, of course,
Russian forces, as we know, remain under immense pressure in the southern parts of the country.
And the over the course of this year, the human toll of this war, as in Serbia,
has been enormous, and the loss of life has been atrocious and inexcusable,
with some 130,000 Ukrainians estimated to have paid the ultimate price to defend for their country the right to self-determination,
and as many and twice as many Russians as made it to appear as part of their legal invasion.
And in the course of this year, also,
countless atrocities have been committed and documented that rise to the levels of war crimes and crimes against humanity,
if not essentially genocide with Ukrainian authorities.
I mean, documented at least 70,000 between 65,070 thousand war crimes incident and countless more
having been documented and remaining under investigation by variety of international bodies.
Only days after the full scale invasion begun, for example,
Ukraine sued the Russian state for violations of the UN Genocide Convention and
other key human rights treaties before the UN International Court of Justice.
In an attempt to get the international judicial body to finally and officially review part of Russia's initial casus belli.
But one of the many justifications adding to it gave for meeting Ukraine, which it had already deployed in Crimea effectively.
And that is a baseless claim that Ukraine was committing genocide against ethnic Russians in Eastern Oblast,
forcing Russia into a humanitarian intervention,
and of course, using a variety of other legal instruments, such as the peace resolution, to circumvent Russia's veto in the Security Council.
Ukraine also asked the judge of the UN General Assembly to make the determination that Russia's and Russia's conduct amounted
to international aggression and that Ukraine is entitled to war reparations and to justice for all victims of the war.
At the request of Ukraine and the United Nations,
the European Union and the OSCE also all dispatched investigative teams focusing on upholding both state
and criminal liability for violations of the laws of war committed by all parties as part of the conflict.
And Ukrainian authorities are preparing to prosecute domestically many of the 70,000 war crimes incident that they documented,
including allegations against their own armed forces,
which frankly are but a drop in the bucket in the near the war crimes Russian forces are committing,
but not investigating or prosecuting and punishing.
The International Criminal Court is also stepped in to investigate and prosecute international crimes in Ukraine.
And and this is because although Ukraine is not yet a state party to the International Criminal Court, its government.
The request to subject the court's jurisdiction dating back to 2013 has to include
high state and potential crimes arising from the illegal annexation of Crimea.
In a move that was later backed by 43 member states, the International Criminal Court,
and then also referred the situation for investigation to the ICC.
And in fact, the ICC swiftly intervened to the point investigators opening a field offices in Ukraine and in an unprecedented move.
This has already resulted in the court essentially issuing arrest warrants against Russian President Vladimir Putin himself and his children,
rights commissioner,
global war crimes relating to the illegal liquidation and forced adoption of keeping in children from Russian occupied territories in Eastern Ukraine.
And a world that is in itself extraordinary because it's the first time that an arrest warrant is
issued against a sitting head of state while a permanent member of the Security Council nonetheless,
which does not, according to the court, and we will return to this in a minute,
because there is a question as to whether the Russian president in particular might be entitled to immunities and what return to this and before.
So I, I guess what I want to say at this point is that Ukraine is focussed on pursuing
legal avenues as reenergize many international in the international community,
particularly those that see the enforcement of fundamental rules of international law as such as protections enshrined in the Geneva Convention.
And of course, the provision against aggression as key to restoring global peace and security.
And Ukraine's partners in Europe and in the United States in particular, see this as a historical juncture,
potentially a second Nuremberg moment in reference to the trials set up by the Allies at the end of World War Two,
which became, of course, foundational as we all to the Moscow, of course.
However, a gaping hole exists in this judicial accountability landscape,
and that is because while a variety of domestic and international criminals will be able to sit in judgement over war crimes,
crimes against humanity and genocide and crimes arising as a result of the war,
there is no court today that can exercise jurisdiction over the war itself or the crime of aggression, as it's known in international law.
The ICC does not have jurisdiction over aggression in Ukraine and that is because essentially under the Rome Statute,
which is a legislative framework that regulates the operation of the court,
the crime of aggression was stopped, is subject to a separate jurisdictional regime that is different from war crimes,
crimes against humanity and genocide. So even though the ICC prosecutor can investigate and prosecute at this moment, these three other crimes,
the crime of aggression in Ukraine, specifically, it falls outside of its jurisdiction.
And of course, there's procedures to amend the Rome Statute.
But these take time and are not likely to be successful, at least at this stage.
So at the moment, there is no international tribunal that can be a kind of Russia.
And of course, in Ukraine, the Ukrainian authorities could not try.
Russia needed to shut before its domestic courts because there is a principle of international law that such weak grounds immunity
to government officials before the domestic courts of other countries in order to allow them to carry out their state functions.
The crime of aggression is particularly complicated from this perspective,
precisely because its definition international law as a leadership requirement, because the crime of aggression being committed by those first of all,
it's always an official state act and the crimes can be committed by private citizens,
but the Russian can only be committed as an official state act by those within the state apparatus that
essentially are in a position to direct the military and political force of the state against another state.
So, you know, liability fundamentally criminal liability for war, for aggression goes all the way to the top.
And this includes, of course, the Russian president and prime minister, as well as then minister of foreign affairs, minister of defence.
And some of these officials, particularly the Prime Minister, President and the Foreign Minister,
are entitled to immunity under international law, so they cannot be tried in Ukraine's domestic court, which is why the government of Ukraine is.
A special aggression tribunal that is now being debated because essentially
such liabilities arise that communities would not attach to the jurisdiction,
essentially the international courts ability to exercise jurisdiction over these individuals.
So right now, the conversation is because I see here there is a few proposals that have been put on the table that have been discussed.
One of them is a proposal for the Constitution of a special tribunal through the United Nations and was brought to a UN General Assembly resolution.
And as a consequence of that,
essentially the United Nations entering into a bilateral treaty with Ukraine to create a U.N. special tribunal for aggression.
And I personally see the rationale for an international tribunal.
But the technicalities of creating it through the U.N. General Assembly, I think, at this moment are not looking quite good.
The prospects especially are not looking quite good.
There's another proposal which I think is gaining steam because a number of governments have put their weight and support behind it,
which is for an international set chambers or a hybrid, you know, so-called.
So this would be a tribunal that is rooted in Ukraine's domestic jurisdiction and judicial system.
But essentially, you would have would incorporate international components, both in terms of the staff.
So prosecutors, judges and counsel of defence counsel, but also in terms of the body of law that it would apply.
Would it be Ukraine domestic law, but it would be the international law definition of the crime of aggression.
And essentially, in this can be essentially constituted, of course,
it can be construed through the U.N. and also be constituted through a regional organisation in Europe,
which I think is the most realistic case scenario,
because both the European Union and the Council of Europe has essentially come out in support of this proposal.
And in fact, the European Union has already set up what they call an international centre for the prosecution of aggression,
which is based on that in The Hague and is structured of course to work in collaboration with the International Criminal Court.
It is being supported by the EU criminal justice agency Eurojust that was already
supporting investigations and prosecutions of other international crimes.
So I think this is essentially the most realistic case scenario and I think it will happen.
I think it's important that it does happen because from my perspective, it's tangible that crimes arising from the war can be prosecuted,
but not the ultimate crime itself, which is the initiation of an unjust and illegal war.
And especially, I believe it's untenable that foot soldiers or military commanders might be prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
But the real criminal penalties here are those that launched that the criminal invasion
get off scot free because they're protected by immunity under international law.
I think that would be a perversion of the legal principles.
I think it would be a perversion of justice.
And I think it would be really a true threat to an ongoing, ongoing threat, actually, to European regional stability and to international peace,
because I think it would send a signal that if we don't punish Russia at this time, that we never will.
And I thought very much about what the implications of that signal might be.
So I think it would leave it at that for the moment. But I welcome your question signal to you.
So I think someone would have to help me navigate the Russians, but I hope that was helpful and I'm looking forward to our discussion.
Federico, thank you very much for that very clear and comprehensive exposition of the possibilities for accountability.
Can we of one question, perhaps anybody ready to ask a question?
Okay. But like you said, Erykah, there's often a tension between peacebuilding and justice.
And I was interested that one of today's earlier speakers suggested that being done by the RCC or Vladimir Putin was misguided because it,
uh, it meant that Western leaders,
peace brokers may be less willing to engage with them and more so that it might
increase scepticism about the sort of ICC as an instrument of Western powers.
So I'd be interested in your your views on that position, but the question of there's often a tension between peacebuilding and justice.
And in this case, one of the earlier speakers, which I think was Robin Williams at the beginning, was sorry.
It was her. Alex. Alex. It was Alex.
Oh, it was Alex saw it as unacceptable and questioned whether question the misguided onus of indicting Putin because that will
lead to less possibility for engagement with him and raises the question whether the ICC is an instrument of Western power.
How would you respond to that? Andrew.
First of all, I want to thank the person that asked the question because it's a very good question.
And I think it's a question that actually is very not only it's important, but it's one that gets asked all the time.
And I don't think it gets properly addressed.
And I think this is also, by the way, not something that arises specifically as a result of the situation in Ukraine.
This is a very old fashioned field.
This tension between peace and justice and but also whether international institutions are upholding international laws such as the ICC,
are tools for Western imperialism or Western power.
We've heard various flavours of that allegation.
So let me start with the latter, which is, you know,
when you look at the composition of the court under 23 state parties, I mean, of course, the prosecutor is independent.
But and I think it would have been absolutely you know, the prosecutor is a prosecutor.
They go with the evidence and they were asked to intervene not just by Ukraine, but 43 of its member states parties.
They had to go in. And I think just based on the sheer amount of the evidence that you're documenting,
it would have been untenable for them, you know, not to issue sports.
Now, I was personally surprised that they went straight to the top and that their first arrest warrant was issued against President Putin.
I think that was almost I was, again, very surprised.
It's very hard to predict precisely what implications that will have.
But I think that there is, you know, part of the reason why this was done and again, this is my personal speculation.
I want to be clear about that.
But I think the two potential consequences to important consequences that will arise from this arrest warrant are ones because,
again, would you dismiss it in a country that is not a member party of the court and there's been no Security Council referral?
And so this is going to force the court to essentially look at the question of whether and
we saw on what basis kind of state immunity does not apply before an international court.
There's a there's of any precedent even in the region within the ICC, in the al-Bashir case, when the president,
then president of Sudan, was indicted for the charges that included genocide and essentially was never arrested in Africa.
And if you travel through countries and where a member of parties of the court, including Jordan and South Africa,
and this essentially forced the litigation to question the issue of whether or not immunities would apply,
given the state was not a state party, but because there was a Security Council referral.
So the court said they they they don't apply.
You should have arrested and surrounded and Bashir.
But in that case, it was a little bit different because it was a Security Council referral.
In this case, we don't have that. So I think it's important that we see that mitigation,
that we see a fuller articulation by the court as to why they think what the what the legal rationale is for saying that immunities do not apply.
And if immunities do not apply because of the international nature of the court, just like it is the ICC then.
Regional Court. The same principle would apply before an international court and even a prosecutor
in a different manner that would essentially be able to then issue arrest warrants,
if not try and be guided by President Putin if he satrap had it.
And some say, you know, this is really an academic question and it's unlikely ever that we will see a, you know, a trial president trial.
And I don't want to think that that's the case.
First of all, I believe that even just having an international tribunal that issues an arrest warrant for a crime of aggression
is important to us because it will significantly restrict it would have political effects on what works,
but it will restrict President Putin's ability to travel freely and to and we
will diminish what I think is a clear objective of the Russian presidency,
which is to maintain a certain level of global standing for the Russian Federation and how effectively to pursue that question of question.
So I think it's important that there is litigation over the issue of immunities.
I think it's important that it's not a trial we have at least there is an arrest
warrant still put it on record that he's been accused of a crime of aggression.
And, you know, as to whether the and I want to the tension between justice and peace and if so, first of all,
there is mechanisms in the ICC statute, and I think that the same mechanisms could be impracticable, for example,
in a potential statute for special aggression, you know, that allow even if there is an arrest warrant or even if there is a trial design that
essentially calls right up to it to hit pause to facilitate peace negotiations.
So those mechanisms are there can be created. And as to whether the prospect of some point of peace, you know,
peace negotiations or negotiations for putting directly should have prevented the court from issuing an arrest warrant at this stage.
I mean, I don't buy the argument that it's going to be the arrest warrant that makes Putin not want to come to the negotiation table,
because in my mind, there's no indication of the fact that he intended to do that to begin with.
So I don't think that the arrest warrants going to be an issue. And if and when that becomes an issue,
there is mechanisms that exist in the in the legal architecture or they can be created in the
future legal architecture that can take that into account and facilitate the peace aspect of it.
But thank you very much indeed. Thank you for coming in from New York.
And we wish you all the best. And thank you very much indeed for your contributions.
Right. We have No. Three, three speakers and about 10 minutes.
So if the next speaker can come forward with flexible motions and we can take a little time out of to do so.
Our next speaker is Ruslan. Ruslan is the recent president of the Ukrainian society and he is going with his four
candidates in Islamic studies and he's going to talk about student initiatives,
particularly the Ukrainian Society Initiative. So if you can be succinct, Ruslan, that would be wonderful.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I will try to be very brief. First of all, I want to thank Liz for the opportunity to be here.
Um, and um, my name is Ruslan.
I, I'm from Ukraine, from a city called Lviv in western Ukraine.
I chose this topic because I was, uh, although I arrived to Oxford two years ago before the start of the political invasion.
Um, the invasion has deeply affected me, but I also had the honour of leading the Ukrainian society shortly shortly after the invasion has started.
And it has been some of the most transformative period of my life.
So you might ask yourself the question, what does a student both initiatives have to do with peacekeeping in the first place?
I guess it depends what definition of peace do we take.
And they're very much like the peace definition of peace,
which holds that human security and human flourishing and a sustainable environment with a constructive management of conflict.
Um, within this definition, I would like to especially focus on human flourishing.
So I will start by briefly outlining the context in which the Ukrainian society was at the start of the invasion,
perhaps the trajectory it has taken since then and the evolution of the society
throughout the past year and return back to the question of human flourishing,
um, uh, from that perspective. So, um, before the full scale invasion, um, Oxford University,
the Ukrainian Society was a very small organisation and the reason for this is that there are so few Ukrainian students at Oxford,
it's because there are also so few opportunities to fund your studies at Oxford.
And normally there would be two students per year if people are lucky, maybe three or four.
And at the start of the full scale invasion, there were about four enrolled students at the university.
Um, now another aspect of the society is that as a university society, it had a very strong focus on the university,
and it was mostly dealing with promoting Ukrainian culture and intellectual heritage and inviting various speakers.
That has also changed on the 24th of February.
Um, on this day, I think a new need emerged between, among the Ukrainian community.
Um, there was the need to act.
Um, we felt that we have to contribute in any way possible to the war effort for the enormous privilege that we have of being in Oxford.
And because we are the only voice of Ukraine that was available at the university without a chair for Ukrainian studies or history or any related um,
topic. And another reason for this was that we have been dealing with enormous amount of
stress and perhaps trauma and we have to channel these negative emotions in some way.
So we,
we collectively we realised much later that actually we channelled them in a constructive way through the initiatives we have undertaken together.
And finally, in this year, I think with confidence,
I can say that our society has become an ambassador of Ukraine, not just in Oxford, perhaps in Oxfordshire.
And this is reflected in our various achievements and things we have been doing. So we started from rallies from the very first day of the invasion.
This is one of the most, uh, the biggest rallies we have organised thus far.
Um, and it has collected £4,000 in just one hour of, um, of the speeches we were delivering.
About a thousand people has come, including the national media, to listen to what Ukrainians have to say about the forthcoming invasion in Oxford.
And the motivation that we had at the time was, first of all, to generate a strong message from us as Ukrainians,
especially about the war atrocities that Russia has been committing.
But second of all, was to raise donations and have some immediate positive impact on the situation.
And most of our donations were, um, went for medical supplies.
And we have also been collecting donations physically.
And this is a photograph from a unit in a shopping mall in, in Court Market Street,
where we have collected nearly 250 boxes of humanitarian aid and shipped them to Ukraine.
Then we have also organised a fundraising dinner, continuously increasing our goal with with in terms of fundraising,
this dinner welcomed um, uh, a special guest list and we had an auction within that auction in Nuffield College.
We have also increased ambitions in terms of the message we want to transmit.
So we have hosted our President in Oxford Union in a joint address to the Oxford students.
And finally we have organised a festival of Ukrainian culture in late September which consisted of 19 different events,
most of them concerts, but also exhibitions over the course of three days in nine different locations across Oxford.
And they brought 42 renowned Ukrainian musicians and artists and academics from Ukraine,
um, to Oxford or from European cities where they were sheltering.
And this initiative has raised £125,000, which we have all donated,
and it was launched together with three of so in partnership with two other institutions, one based here in Oxford and one in Ukraine.
And one of our most special guests was a music composer,
which you can see holding flowers in this very centre of the photo in Leicester of who came here on his 85th
birthday while we were organising all these events and this by this time the photo was from late September,
Ukrainian refugees started coming to Oxfordshire and very soon we realised that Oxfordshire was
one of the most popular destinations or perhaps most open destinations to Ukrainian refugees,
according to the official statistics of the Oxfordshire County Council at by July 2022.
In Oxfordshire there were already 15,000 Ukrainian refugees.
And that is in the context of 100 Ukrainian refugees, 100,000 Korean refugees that were already accepted to the UK.
So it's a very big proportion of Ukrainian refugees and this is a photo of an event we have organised together since the arrival.
From April onwards we have been trying to support them as very often.
We would be the first point of contact when they arrive to Oxfordshire in terms of any sort of support like job search or anything else.
And then what is also happening is that we got 26 graduate scholars arriving shortly thereafter thanks to a
special scholarship that was established in record time at the same year by the president of Rubin College,
Philando Tarasenko. And here you can see the Ukrainian scholars becoming active within the Ukrainian
society the same day or week they arrive to Oxford already in the fresh respect,
and along with them over 20 academics, including the academics at risks.
So while we are building this network and trying out different initiatives,
it soon became clear that we have to unite all of these students that have arrived and try to establish a broader network.
So we we established together with other Ukrainian societies the first Ukrainian conference in Manchester.
We have brought together 25 different societies.
Usually it was one or two members of society. Due to a very limited budget,
but it allowed us to make connections and reflect about all of the things that we are doing and why are we here in the UK?
Um, what, um, what kind of goals do we set ourselves in terms of Ukraine's future reconstruction?
Finally the incredible amount of new ideas in this narrative.
All the Ukrainian students here, which, by the way, represented an equal portion from each faculty,
so each division and all belong to different disciplines,
allowed us to also undertake more ambitious projects after we have worked on short term initiatives with immediate impact such as fundraising.
We have tried to think of longer term initiatives that would be, first of all, more sustainable in terms of how they're financed and managed.
Second of all, that we utilise in recognising all the resources that were available to us here at Oxford.
And the first initiative that we have launched was the Oxford Incubator, which was aimed at supporting a very vulnerable,
yet very important component of our economy, which is the IT sector and innovation.
So what we have done is we have asked Oxford based Start-Up mentors if they would be willing to mentor our selected start-ups,
and we have contacted various investors to try to make a match between the Start-ups, the mentors and the investors.
And I'm very happy to share that.
One of the first start-ups that have joined us has recently received the first large investment from a New York based fund,
and they are working on bone combing. Another aspect we have focussed on is what the actual city can offer to Ukraine.
So we have made a vote about, uh,
choosing a city to propose to the local city council to create a partnership or twinning which would eventually be twinning.
And we picked Kharkiv, um, for various reasons. First of all, it's at the frontline.
So it has been majorly affected and needs immediate intervention.
Second of all, Kharkiv is a centre for excellence and innovation, just like Oxford is.
So they can be mutual mutual benefit from this kind of partnership.
And, um, actually today was the launch day of the OC Association just across the street.
So hopefully in some time Oxford will become an official twin city to Kharkiv and explore many new avenues for collaboration.
The last thing I have done with the Ukrainian society was to organise the one
year Ukraine peace rally and in commemoration of all the victims of the war.
And it was also a powerful message of hope, but also of condemnation when the council, the chancellor of the University of our platform,
has given his statements and we've also received statements from local in peace, from the mayor of the city,
from the head of the Oxford County Council and the founder of the Ukrainian Graduates Commission.
How many other voices?
So why am I presenting all of this is to perhaps reflect about the possible contribution it can make to peace in Ukraine on the longer run.
And I could, of course, bring quantifiable impact, but I decided that I do not want to focus on the money, race or any other numbers,
but really the human flourishing aspects of the definition of peace that was proposed to us by the peace network.
And what it means is that the framework of the of a student led society by student initiative allows me personally and I believe
every member of the society to employ their time and skills in a way that would allow us not just to force individuals,
but also lead others and support such initiatives.
And I think it's very important to remember that in such adverse conditions as in wartime, it is very important to have a source,
a channel through which you turn all these negative emotions and impact into something constructive,
and perhaps also protect yourself from very difficult and stressful periods.
And then the final point is that it has it is a social activity and it brings people together.
It can bring people together, not just in one city, but across different cities and actually across many boundaries now, thanks to technology.
So thinking of all these three aspects, um,
I would like to thank everyone who has been so supportive of us during the past year, and perhaps I invite everyone to.
Reflect about the potential that students and initiatives have to promote in peace in other contexts.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
I'm sure there are many, many questions, but I will ask you to hold them for teatime and just just thank you.
And we'll move on to our final speaker, who is Diana Abu.
Also, like while she's coming down, just to mention that Yaroslav, who spoke earlier,
is the current president since the Oxford University Ukraine Society, so to speak, to her as well, if you're interested in the society itself.
So Diana is a student at Oxford at the School of Government,
waiting for a master's in public policy and the recipient of an Oxford scholarship for Ukrainian refugees.
And for the past two years, she's worked as a policy adviser in the Israeli diplomatic mission in Kiev.
So thank you. Thank you so much. So I'm going to be very brief,
but I want to talk about the role of women in war and the role of women in our peace process building and how we can
create a channel for talking between women in Ukraine and possibly women in Russia and local society in Russia.
So we're going to start with talking about women's role in peacebuilding.
And we know that from Swedish in, for example, in Afghanistan, after the sexual violence committed,
Russian troops in Ukraine are the rights of women and they are unfortunately role are going to devastating.
And we currently see that women are one of the largest parts of the society there being a heart of by the atrocities of war.
And although women are largely impacted by the conflict and paying a higher price for this devastation, unfortunately, we can see that.
We can see that their presence in the peace process, unfortunately, is not well represented, not only in Ukraine, but also around the globe.
And we can tell that between the 1992 and 2092, for example,
women serve only 6% of mediators of 7% of signatories, and so 10% of negotiations globally.
And also, we can tell that, unfortunately, references to women and girls and gender equality in peace agreements are also quite minimal.
And if we look at that analysis of the agreements that were implemented, we can tell that only 20% contain references to women and gender rights,
and also only 6% contain at least one provision that specifically address violence against women.
Also talking about the gender, how the war effort, the gender violence in Ukraine,
we can tell that obviously out of the six and 4.8 million displaced people in Ukraine, almost 65% are women and girls.
And I personally were walking in the refugee camp in Poland in almost a few weeks.
And you can imagine the situation where people, mostly women, 98% of women, I would say,
are with children and elderly people coming to the refugee camp, which was actually situated in the Tesco supermarket.
And people who are transitioning all the time from the border to the supermarkets and
staying there for a few months and then transitioning to another station to another,
and then unless they find any place to live in Poland. So this was going on for a few months on the border and literally,
really people and women were living in supermarkets and trying to find a place where they can go after this station that they have.
And we can tell also that internally,
women are also the ones who are most in the space on the side and obviously from the east side and from the south part of Ukraine,
they're relocated to the western part of Ukraine.
And also there was a difficulties for them to try to relocate and find a place for them to live, especially when they're coming with elderly people.
And of course, their caregivers have children, as usually men are staying in the place or they cannot cross the border or they prefer not to go.
So there could be also this difficulty that we are experiencing today.
But while Russian aggression is continuing, also planning for recovery and for the peace building process has already begun and
actually to ensure that this reconstruction and peacebuilding process could happen,
the environment of women in this process is particularly important.
And I think that in Ukraine of the Women's Society for Gender Equality,
for Women's Violence play a huge role in promoting humanitarian development and support of women.
And I think that one of the speakers mentioned that from humanitarian standpoint, we actually can start some communication between different sides.
Unfortunately, I can say that from the official point, women are also not that present in the representation of women at the table, for example.
But as I said, women.
A particularly strong part in our local society, local community and actually women's civil society is kind of holding community together.
And because of this strong community, I think the support and communication is possible.
We can also talk a little bit about the importance of involvement in the reconstruction as currently these topics are already ongoing and
there are a lot of investment and construction projects that are going and especially involving women in this are topics are also important.
And I think that from this perspective it's I'm proud to be a woman and present in Ukraine here.
And I think we have quite a lot of scholars here who are also women and they are kind
of trying to lead the negotiation and communication respect not only from women,
but from respect, but also I think that's it.
Thank you so much for your attention and thank you for being this conference.
Thank you so much. Thank you, Diane and Mary.
Thank all our speakers this afternoon.
We have now the opportunity to go for tea. Should anyone be tempted to drift away?
Could I ask you possibly to take off your badge and leave it at the registration table before you go?
Just say that now. But I hope you will stay for tea and come back for the talk by Carne Ross.
Carne, are you with us? Hello. Welcome.
Um, which should be a fascinating talk after tea.
And we will then do the actual exercise to allow you to reflect on what you may have learned.
And we will ask the speakers to give the reflections quickly on what they have learned during the day.
So there is an important thing to come after tea.
But meanwhile, please enjoy tea and come back at half past.
Thank you for your help. What do you think that tells us?
I think. You only get the main backdrop on the screen through Coda.
Oh, great. Player Yeah. So that's yours, isn't it?
The blue. Can you do a photo and.
You know, one, two, three.
But how long do we have to put in there?
But. Building.
I know. How about that?
Now because we have our feet high.
How many people? What are you doing with your feet?
But now you tell the people what you want.
You are all very, very nice to each other, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think that I left me feeling pretty good, thanks to you.
Are you okay? Yeah. So what do you think?
Oh, I. Oh. For.
It's a little. Oh.
So I said, okay. So I walked up to you and you walked out down the street.
Also, you were.
Yeah. Oh. Service is exactly what I was that I wanted to do.
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And that all. Yeah.
So if you can ask yourself. I just think that's what I'm saying.
I want to do it for something I really love.
I know. I just want. That's why I became a politician.
Because people love the way. Yeah, I just.
I figure out that's the way you get people's attention.
It is not the people. Although you have to also be hurt or something a bit at the beginning.
But it was not. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a better way to get money.
Yeah. I like that because I'm from.
I am proud of my family connection here, because I do think that you.
You okay? Yes. I want you know, I know what's next for.
Is there anything?
Well, we will be looking to learn more.
Really? Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Well, actually, someone can come.
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Course I was. I was. And.
And the coolest thing about it is that.
Variables. This time I managed to.
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And you win by. I'm playing this kind of.
So I think that's actually. What do you do when you know they could run over the wall?
What if you could do it?
It's not a good thing to start looking at other people when they think you're looking into it and
you don't get into it is very easy for people to sort of be out there and absolutely be the best,
but something which can be done. Yeah, but like you say, that's just not being there.
I wish I knew I saw her that she was so nice to be with that for like a year and lost everything just now.
This is the most crazy.
How do you like somebody who has another year of a.
I was kind of sad that. Right.
Because I wasn't with Funny. There was something I reported on 50 years ago.
Not least. That's crazy. Seems like there was another thing when you were like, Oh, yeah, like, it's like you.
This is what you look like.
You know, there was something I was just about to see, and I'm constantly like, well, not better.
But I was first was like this.
And it's very hard because what happens is we actually do more than just go.
That's like somebody who tries. What?
And as far as the command centre.
So I was wondering whether it was just.
So some of these lessons are just some of the.
That's just what I want people to know. I'm pretty sure people in the polls can and in some cases come close to the first person.
So much. The White House is.
Okay. Oh, so now we're trying to clarify what those separate.
What are you saying? Anyone who's hopes to help us understand that we need to start a little business on the other side of.
So that's what we tried to do.
We were able to give both.
Yeah. He was happy. Yeah.
You know, so it was just it was like, whoa.
You see what saying this is?
No. They?
If we have to go to the.
To to.
So much. So I decided that I wanted to work at the house to make way for the Big Six that are fighting to keep the journalists in Brussels.
And I was like, Are you kidding? Well, I suppose I don't have to write about all my family ever was there working.
You want to have more house?
Oh, actually, one of the things I started talking about is that these, you know, this there's not practical.
It's going to do surplus in possessions.
It was kind of. My brother friend.
So what are you looking for?
So I'll do something with you. Yes, sir. You ready?
All right. Yeah. You. If you've seen all of that, it's.
This. Maybe they're not worth.
And basically, you know, it's pretty hard to survive. So she left.
Sounds great to have you have.
So she's going to have to be kind of the type of person that we have to have almost as Americans, really.
I mean, this boy loves this guy. The project.
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, jeez.
Oh, gosh. I mean, just cause it, they have.
First. He has spent the past week on the beach camping in Wisconsin and.
Person. So yeah, we had a couple people.
But now it's quite a farce because.
How long? So despite the fact that it only.
It's time to go. Nobody.
This happens to be the. Yeah.
I want of this. Sure. As I see it.
Yes, that is absolutely because I think that basically, yes, people talk about that, but they try to.
Let's talk about the New York Times article or some.
Like I said, it's about how we operate about you.
Like what, actually? Like they said, actually, people want to check out their.
You just naturally have a. Bottom line at this time.
Where we need a cease fire is working right now all the time.
But I don't see that happening there.
And I mean. The thing is that the soldiers actually.
They are easily pregnant by. Just like this.
510. So I mean, how many candidates talk about winning this amazing political.
Yeah. I mean, I wasn't.
I was worried that. We have.
That's. Let's move on to politics.
We just want.
For. It shouldn't be something that they don't want.
Just. Just to stay in touch. There's still no.
Sometimes you have to sit here, and I think you need to hear this.
You have to speak to that.
So. So.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
I'm six.
Yeah. Yeah.
You see?
You know. Yeah.
Because I like.
Highlights of. U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald.
I am working with. I have.
And yeah, it tends to refund.
Who groups.
For about 15 minutes at a time. Okay.
Should we do that? Yes. And then do you.
Cut. Yeah.
So I think. So.
I'm just going to. Speak.
The speakers could just say one more.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sounds good. Yeah. Yeah.
The microphones. Yeah, just running. All right.
I mean. See, that's what we wanted to see.
Thank you very much. All right.