Russia's Information Warfare: The Case of Ukraine in a Global Comparative Context - Russia's Information Warfare: The Case of Ukraine in a Global Comparative Context

DATE: 12 OCTOBER 2019 | TIME: 9:00 A.M. – 5:15 PM |VENUE: VARSCONA HOTEL ON WHYTE, EDMONTON

Days

Hours

Mins

Seconds

Event Date

12 October 2019

Event Location

Varscona Hotel on Whyte | 8208 106 St NW, Edmonton, AB

Call Us

780.492.1470

Send Us an Email

pankieie@ualberta.ca

The Alberta Society for the Advancement of Ukrainian Studies (ASAUS), together with the Contemporary Ukraine Studies Program at the University of Alberta’s Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS), is organizing a conference titled “Russia’s Information Warfare: The Case of Ukraine in a Global Comparative Context,” to be held in Edmonton, Alberta, on 12 October 2019.

Russia’s increasing use of new information and cyber-warfare technologies is a strategically important issue for the state security of Canada and other democratic countries. During the conference, prominent experts will closely examine Russia’s information and cyber interference in Ukraine’s internal affairs in a global comparative context.

The goal of the conference is to contribute to further awareness and understanding of Russia’s intentions and strategies in Europe, the USA, and other countries and regions worldwide. The conference additionally aims to foster new types of dialogue between professional journalists and experts in media and cybersecurity. It will also focus on engaging local communities in Canada and abroad, mindful of the benefits of social engagement in helping to adopt new systems of checks and balances that play an important role vis-à-vis potential information threats.

The communication and cyber strategies that Russia has been using to destabilize the political and social situation in Ukraine and elsewhere will be closely examined from a variety of perspectives. Comparisons will be drawn with Russia’s information campaigns in neighbouring countries and, farther afield, in Central and Western European countries as well as the US and Canada.

The case of Ukraine will be discussed in detail, as a country where Russia’s hybrid warfare played a significant role in the annexation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in March 2014, and in the subsequent and still-ongoing military conflict in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

The conference programme and registration form will be posted soon on the conference website. In the meantime, if you have any questions please feel free to contact ASAUS president Oleksandr Pankieiev through email at pankieie@ualberta.ca, or by phone at +1 780.492.1470.

Conference Co-chairs

Oleksandr Pankieiev

President, Alberta Society for the Advancement of Ukrainian Studies
Research Communication Coordinator, ACE /CIUS, Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta

Volodymyr Kravchenko

Director, Contemporary Ukraine Studies Programs, CIUS
Professor, Department of History & Classics, Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta

CLICK TO REGISTER FOR THE CONFERENCE NOW

REGISTRATION IS FREE!

Jessikka Aro

Jessikka Aro is a Finnish journalist working for Finland’s public service broadcaster, Yle. In September 2014 she started investigating pro-Russian Internet trolls. The resulting series of articles led to her receiving Bonnier’s Award for Journalism in March 2016. Her investigation encountered a major backlash from pro-Russian trolls. She describes the responses as including a phone call […]

Marcel H. Van Herpen

Marcel H. Van Herpen is a security expert specializing in Russia, Eastern Europe, and the post-Soviet states. He is the author of three books on Putin’s Russia, which have been translated into several languages, and he is a frequent media contributor to publications such as Forbes, National Interest, Project Syndicate, Moscow Times, and Japan Times. As a security expert […]

Justin Ling

Justin Ling is a Toronto-based freelance journalist with many years of experience covering politics, defence, national security, and cyber issues. He has written for VICE News, Motherboard, the Globe and Mail, National Post, the Guardian, and others. Among his breaking stories are: “Canadian police obtained BlackBerry’s Global Decryption Key”; “Canadian cops scrambled to get approval for cellphone surveillance […]

Lisa Gaufman

Dr. Elizaveta Gaufman is a post-doctoral fellow with the Institute for Intercultural and International Studies at the University of Bremen. Her research focuses on the impact of verbal and visual enemy images in new media, including representations of gender and ethnicity. Her monograph Security Threats and Public Perception: Digital Russia and the Ukraine Crisis was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2017.

Olga Bertelsen

Olga Bertelsen is an assistant professor of intelligence studies in the Department of Global Security and Intelligence Studies at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s College of Security and Intelligence. After a medical education in Ukraine she studied at Bloomsburg University, Penn State, and the University of Nottingham. Widely published on the methods of the Soviet secret police and state […]

Carrie Smith

Dr. Carrie Smith chairs the Modern Languages and Cultural Studies department and is a professor of German studies at the University of Alberta. Her research is located at the intersection of feminist activism and digital culture, including its practices, products, politics, theories, and communities. She is a co-author of Awkward Politics: Technologies of Popfeminist Activism (McGill-Queens UP, 2016) and co-editor […]

Jean-Christophe Boucher

Dr. Jean-Christophe Boucher is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary. He is currently the director for research in civil-military relations at the Canadian Defence and Security Network, a fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, a research fellow at the Centre for […]

Oleksandr Pankieiev

Oleksandr Pankieiev is a Conference Co-chair and a President of the Alberta Society for the Advancement of Ukrainian Studies. He is also a Research Communication Coordinator at the Arts Collaboration Enterprise and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta. His research interests include the history of Southern Ukraine, the history and theory […]

Volodymyr Kravchenko

Conference co-chair Volodymyr Kravchenko directs the Contemporary Ukraine Studies Program at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies under the Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta, as well as a professor in its Department of History and Classics. He was the director of CIUS in 2012–18, and editor of the proceedings of its 40th anniversary conference […]

Alla Hurska

Alla Hurska is an analyst at the Jamestown Foundation (Washington, D.C.), an associate at the International Center for Policy Studies (Kyiv), and a research assistant at the University of Alberta. Her main area of research interest is in the history and politics of contemporary Russia and post-Soviet countries. She is also interested in the role […]

Jessica Zychowicz

Jessica Zychowicz is a Stasiuk Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. She was recently a Fulbright Scholar (2017–18) based at the National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.” Her monograph, Superfluous Women: Feminism, Art, and Revolution in 21st-Century Ukraine, is forthcoming from the University of Toronto Press in June 2020. She also co-edits a series […]

Olena Goncharova

Olena Goncharova has been a Kyiv Post staff writer since January 2012 and became the newspaper’s Canadian correspondent in June 2018. She is based in Edmonton, Alberta. She has a master’s degree from the Institute of Journalism at Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv. As a 2016 Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellow, Goncharova worked for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette under […]

Andrew Wilson

Wilson is Professor in Ukrainian Studies at University College London. His book Ukraine Crisis: What the West Needs to Know was published by Yale in October 2014 in the UK and in November in the USA. He has worked extensively on the comparative politics of the post-Soviet states since 1990. His other books include Belarus: The Last European Dictatorship (2011), The Ukrainians: Unexpected […]

REGISTRATION 9:00–9:30

OPENING REMARKS 9:30–9:40

VOLODYMYR KRAVCHENKO |Department of History and Classics and Director, Contemporary Ukraine Studies Program, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta

OLEKSANDR PANKIEIEV |President, Alberta Society for the Advancement of Ukrainian Studies, and Arts Collaboration Enterprise, University of Alberta

PLENARY SESSION 9:40–11:25

Origins of Russia’s propaganda and use of the Church as the Kremlin’s propaganda tool

MODERATOR: VOLODYMYR KRAVCHENKO |Contemporary Ukraine Studies Program, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta

OLGA BERTELSEN | Department of Global Security and Intelligence Studies, College of Security and Intelligence, Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University

“Russian covert transnational operations and information warfare in the 1960s–1980s”

MARCEL VAN HERPEN |The Cicero Foundation

“‘Hybrid Church’ for a ‘Hybrid War’: Role of the Russian Orthodox Church as the Kremlin’s propaganda tool”

ANDREW WILSON |University College London

“Russia’s propaganda in Ukraine since 2014”

PANEL I 11:25–12:40

Undermining democratic values: Targets of Russian propaganda

MODERATOR: JESSICA ZYCHOWICZ |Dr. Jeanette Bayduza Post-doctoral Fellow, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta

CARRIE SMITH|Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, University of Alberta

“Uncomfortable bedfellows: Virtual and visceral digital feminist community building”

ELIZAVETA GAUFMAN |Department of European Cultures and Languages, University of Groningen

“Facts and fiction of Russia’s ‘Information War’”

LUNCH 12: 40–13:30

PANEL II 13:30–14:45

Framing Russia’s Information Warfare

MODERATOR: OLEKSANDR PANKIEIEV | Alberta Society for the Advancement of Ukrainian Studies, and Arts Collaboration Enterprise, University of Alberta

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BOUCHER | Department of Political Science and The School of Public Policy, University of Calgary

“Social media and the Russian information campaign in Canada: The case of the 2014 Crimean crisis”

ALLA HURSKA | Jamestown Foundation

“Russian ‘Disinformation Intermarium’: between the Baltic and the Black Seas”

PANEL III 14:45–16:00

View from within: Liberal journalism in the face of Russia’s information campaigns

MODERATOR: OLENA GONCHAROVA |Kyiv Post newspaper

JUSTIN LING |Toronto-based freelance journalist

“Funhouse mirrors: How Moscow distorts reality”

JESSIKKA ARO | YLE Finnish Broadcasting Company

“Russian trolls as a security threat”

COFFEE BREAK 16:00–16:15

ROUND TABLE 16:15–17:15

Challenging the “Post-truth” world

PARTICIPANTS | Jessikka Aro, Olga Bertelsen, Volodymyr Kravchenko, Justin Ling, Oleksandr Pankieiev, Marcel Van Herpen

CLOSING REMARKS 17:15–17:30

Alberta Society for the Advancement of Ukrainian Studies

Oleksandr Pankieiev, President (Co-chair of the conference)
Suzanna Brytan, Vise-President
Ihor Broda, Secretary
Maryna Chernyavska, Director
Olena Goncharova, Director
Yulianna Voloshyna, Director
Bohdan Walkiw, Director
Peter A Rolland, Director

Conference Website and Program Editor

Ksenia Lena Maryniak, MA, C.Tran.
Editor, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies

Contemporary Ukraine Studies Program, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta

Volodymyr Kravchenko, Director (Co-chair of the conference)
Vita Yakovlyeva, Research Associate
Jessica Zychowicz, Stasiuk Post-Doctoral Fellow
Oleksii PolegkyI, Bayduza Post-Doctoral Fellow