EVENT Crimea: Where Russia’s War Began and Where Ukraine Will Win

About the Event

The Kremlin began its initial invasion and occupation of Ukraine in Crimea in 2014. Since then, Russian occupation officials have sought to eradicate Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar identity, history, and culture in cementing Moscow’s illegal annexation of the peninsula. Russia’s model for occupying, annexing, and Russifying Crimea was initially tested during the invasion of Georgia in 2008. The Kremlin was emboldened by the West’s lack of response to that invasion and applied the same approach in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. A weak Western response to Russia’s actions in 2014 signaled to Russian President Vladimir Putin that his expanded invasion in February 2022 would be met with a similar lack of resolve. The Kremlin leader has been unpleasantly surprised in this regard.

Moscow’s ten-year occupation of Crimea demonstrates what is at stake if the peninsula is not liberated and Russia wins in Ukraine. The Jamestown Foundation is honored to host Dr. Taras Kuzio to discuss the release of his report “Crimea: Where Russia’s War Began and Where Ukraine Will Win.” The report builds on a previous Jamestown report published by Dr. Kuzio in 2010, “The Crimea: Europe’s Next Flashpoint?” Jamestown President Peter Mattis will moderate a discussion with Dr. Kuzio on the report’s findings, as well as the audience Q&A. Former US Ambassador to Poland Daniel Fried will discuss the policy implications and choices facing US and allied decision-makers in the weeks and months ahead.

Join us Monday, July 8th, from 10:00-11:15 AM for this essenial discussion. The event will be held online over Zoom and subsequently uploaded to The Jamestown Foundation’s YouTube channel. Register here.

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Speakers

Peter Mattis is President of The Jamestown Foundation, a position he began in Fall 2023. He returned to the foundation after having served as editor of China Brief from 2011 to 2013 and as a fellow in the China program from 2013 to 2018. Prior to rejoining Jamestown, Mr. Mattis was Senior Fellow with the U.S. House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party on loan from the Special Competitive Studies Project where he served as Director for Intelligence.

Dr. Taras Kuzio is a professor of political science at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy and an associate research fellow at the London-based think tank, the Henry Jackson Society. He is the winner of the 2022 Peterson Literary Prize for Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War: Autocracy-Orthodoxy-Nationality published by Routledge and author of Fascism and Genocide: Russia’s War Against Ukrainians published by Ibidem and Columbia University Press in 2023. Dr. Kuzio has also held positions at the International Institute of Strategic Studies; NATO Information and Documentation Centre in Kyiv; Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, George Washington University; German Marshall Fund; and Foreign Policy Institute, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, among others. He earned a BA in Economics from the University of Sussex and an MA in Area Studies (USSR and Europe) from the University of London. He completed a PhD in political science from the University of Birmingham, England, and finished a post-doctoral fellowship at Yale University.

Amb. Daniel Fried is currently a Weiser Family Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He is also on the Board of Directors of the National Endowment for Democracy and a Visiting Professor at Warsaw University. He was the coordinator for sanctions policy during the Obama administration, assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia during the Bush administration, and senior director at the National Security Council for the Clinton and Bush administrations. He also served as ambassador to Poland during the Clinton administration. Ambassador Fried also served as the State Department’s first Special Envoy for the Closure of the Guantanamo (GTMO) Detainee Facility. He established procedures for the transfer of individual detainees and negotiated the transfers of 70 detainees to 20 countries, with improved security outcomes.