Please join the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute for a talk with Sasha Romantsova. Moderated by Mark Andryczyk.
For 9 years, a war has been going on between two countries in the middle of the Eurasian continent. Since February 24, 2022, this war has called into question the existence and capacity of such giant subjects of international relations as the UN Security Council, the OSCE, the International Criminal Court, and others. This war, some 4.5 thousand miles from the USA, as it turned out, led to a food crisis for half of the population of the planet Earth, as well as doubts about the reality of such constructs as “Great Russian Culture”, “History of the Russian State”, “Kyivan Rus” and “The power of democracy”. This is a lecture by the first documentarian of international crimes in Ukraine, who started working in the Russian-occupied Donbas in 2014. This is a lecture about the situation in Ukraine through the eyes of a human rights defender whose status as a Nobel laureate gives her the right to talk about human rights defenders who cannot speak for themselves – human rights defenders from Belarus and Russia.
Sasha Romantsova studied at the University of Economics and Law KROK in Kyiv, where she obtained a Master’s degree in International Economics from the Faculty of International Relations, receiving a second Master’s degree in Project Management after a couple of years. At the end of 2021, she obtained a master’s degree in conflict management and mediation. Since May 2014, she has pursued her professional career as a human rights defender at the Center for Civil Liberties (CCL). Sasha’s first project involved monitoring and documenting human rights violations and political persecution in Russian-occupied Crimea. From May of 2014 until the end of 2016, Sasha has coordinated mobile observation of human rights violations and war crimes in eastern Ukraine, and has continued monitoring political persecution in occupied Crimea. Since September 2017, Sasha has served as Executive Director of the “Center for Civil Liberties”, and from February 24, 2022, she has also worked to coordinate the documentation of war crimes and advocacy as part of the global initiative “Tribunal for Putin”. Sasha participates in field missions in the Kyiv region.
