Arts and humanities

Conference on Monday, April 4, 2022

• Olivier Forlin - NATO and European defense

Faced with the war against Ukraine unleashed by Putin's Russia on February 24, the EU has put up a united front: in addition to economic-financial sanctions against Russia, aid measures for Ukraine (including deliveries of defensive weapons) have been adopted. Several EU countries have also announced the development of their own defense capabilities.
However, both military support for Ukraine and the defense of EU countries bordering on Ukraine are primarily provided by NATO. Olivier Forlin's talk will focus on a long-term analysis of the factors behind the failure of the EEC/EU to develop a common foreign and defense policy, and the role assigned to NATO.

• Anne Dalmasso - The energies of the crisis (gas, oil, nuclear)

Russia's outbreak of war against Ukraine revealed the extent of the energy interrelations between Russia and European countries, and highlighted the difficulty of following through on the logic of trade sanctions in this area.
We'll take a brief look at how these relations have developed since the collapse of the USSR, if not before, at their weight in the Russian and European economies, and at the deeply ambivalent nature of these economic interdependencies in a post-globalization context. 

Tuesday, April 5, 2022 conference

Marianne Guérin - Russia and its western frontiers in the 20th century
The question of borders is an old one for Russia, even if we only really understand it, dramatically, in the light of the invasion of Ukraine a month ago.
The aim of the conference is to put this invasion into perspective over a long period of time, by looking at the role that Soviet power - and before it, Tsarist power - attributed to borders, particularly in the West, the policies it pursued and the way in which it thought about its borders and its relations with its European neighbors.
What's at stake here is trying to put the situation we're currently experiencing back into "long-term" perspective.

 

Conference on Wednesday, April 6, 2022

Olga Bronnikova - How war is seen in Russia. State control of the media and the Internet
Various polls are circulating in the Russian and Western media today, asking what Russians think of the war in Ukraine.
More often than not, they testify to the support of at least half of society for the aims of the "special operation", as the authorities call the war.
While many anti-war initiatives are underway, the message they convey is struggling to be heard.
We'll be looking at how the authorities have gradually taken control of the media and the Internet.

 

Conference on Thursday, April 7, 2022

Romain Geffrouais - Getting to grips with the complex issues at stake in the war in Ukraine, information and disinformation
How can we explain the outbreak of war in Ukraine? Who are the players and what is at stake? On what scales is it relevant to analyze conflict? What are the different forms of conflict?
For several weeks now, we have been grappling with the difficulty of understanding the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, due in particular to the multiplicity of often contradictory information channels. This multi-voice intervention is based on the need to move away from an essentialist and simplistic reading of the conflict, and to sketch out a contextualized and complex approach to this contemporary conflict, with particular emphasis on the socio-economic issues at stake.

 

Friday, April 8, 2022 conference

Éric AunobleUniversity of Geneva - Russia / Ukraine: an impossible empire against an improbable nation
Neighbors at war today, Russia and Ukraine share the same millennia-old history, but this shared past sets them at odds.
Medieval "Rus'", Zaporogues Cossacks, the expansion and collapse of European empires, the Soviet period and the Second World War: we'll evoke these milestones to shed light on the blind spots in the "national novels" of the two enemies.
By this yardstick, we can question both Ukrainian national assertiveness and Russian imperial power.