CIUS Round Table on the protests in Belarus
28 August 2020
The results of the 2020 presidential election in Belarus provoked ongoing massive protests against the incumbent, Alexander Lukashenko. His victory in the election is believed to have been rigged, and the brutal treatment of the Belarusian protesters has been widely condemned by Western countries. President Lukashenko has been in power for 26 years, his rule of the post-Soviet republic relying on an extensive police force, controlled media, and substantial economic aid from Russia.
The distinguished round table participants will examine the geopolitical, regional, and socio-cultural aspects of the Belarusian protests and potential consequences for Ukraine and other neighbouring countries.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
Natalia Khanenko-Friesen
Director, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies
Professor and Huculak Chair, Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, University of Alberta
Volodymyr Kravchenko
Professor, Department of History & Classics
Director, Contemporary Ukraine Studies Program, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta
Moderator – Frank Sysyn
Director, Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta
SPEAKERS
Anders Åslund is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. He is a leading specialist on economic policy in Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe and served as an economic advisor to the governments of Russia (1991–94) and Ukraine (1994–97). Dr. Åslund was the founding director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics and taught at the Stockholm School of Economics, and he has worked at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Brookings Institution.
Bohdan Nahaylo is a British-Ukrainian political analyst and writer, journalist, and broadcaster in Ukraine. He was a researcher for Amnesty International (1978–82), director of the Ukrainian Language Service of Radio Liberty (1989–91), and senior policy adviser for the UNHCR on the CIS region (1994–2013) and its representative in Belarus (1999–2003). In 2014–15 Mr. Nahaylo headed the UN Secretariat’s Department of Political Affairs team in Ukraine. He has been an international project advisor for Democracy Reporting International since May 2016 and was its country representative in Ukraine until December 2017.
Tatiana Shchyttsova is a professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the European Humanities University, Vilnius (the Belarusian university-in-exile), and the academic director of its Center for Research of Intersubjectivity and Interpersonal Communication. She has been awarded international research fellowships at the Universities of Tübingen, Freiburg (supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation), Wuppertal, Sheffield, and St. Olaf College (USA). In 2018 Dr. Shchyttsova was elected president of the International Association for the Humanities. She is also the editor-in-chief of the philosophy and cultural studies journal Topos.
Oleksandr Pankieiev, Ph.D.
Research Coordinator