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Ten years of Russia’s war against Ukraine

Welcome to a conference on Ukrainian resilience and European cooperation. What are the ways to bring justice domestically and internationally, and why does it matter? Why is European cooperation so important?

Ten years of Russia’s war against Ukraine

Producer:
Bergen Global, photo by Konstantin and Vlada Liberovs

Main content

Russia has been waging war on Ukraine for a decade: annexation of Crimea, followed by the war in Eastern Ukraine since 2014, and full-scale attack all over Ukrainian territory since 24 February 2022.

How has the Ukrainian society been coping with the war and what’s the key to its resilience? What are the ways to bring justice domestically and internationally, and why does it matter? Why is European cooperation so important?

These were the questions explored in four panel debates (please see the full programme below):

  • Panel 1: A decade of war and resilience of Ukrainian society
  • Panel 2: Justice for Ukraine and for the international order
  • Panel 3: Reparations and sanctions against Russia
  • Panel 4: War against Ukraine and European cooperation

Programme

09.30-09.40 Welcome

  • Karl Harald Søvig, Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Bergen
  • Ihor Holovchenko, Charge d'Affaires a.i. of Ukraine to the Kingdom of Norway
  • Liliia Oprysk, University of Bergen (on behalf of the organizing committee)

09.40-10.40 Panel 1: A decade of war and resilience of Ukrainian society

Moderator: Anatolii Kyryliuk, NORAD 

  • Revolution of Dignity - Daniil Butenko, University of Bergen
  • The Resilience and Trauma of Ukraine’s Civil Society - Kateryna Zarembo (online), Technical University Darmstadt
  • War and revolution in Ukraine: a European story - Maryna Rabinovych, University of Agder

10.40-11.00 Coffee Break

11.00-12.00 Panel 2: Justice for Ukraine and for the international order

Moderator: Knut Einar Skodvin, University of Bergen

  • Prosecuting war crimes domestically - Artem Nazarko, University of Bergen
  • Seeking justice before international courts and tribunals: why does it matter? - Gaiane Nuridzhanian, UiT The Arctic University of Norway
  • Crime of aggression - Terje Einarsen, University of Bergen

12.00–12.45 Lunch break

12.45-13.20 Panel 3: Reparations and sanctions against Russia

Moderator: Marthe Sleire Engedahl, University of Bergen

  • Reparations for Ukraine: progress, mechanisms, and challenges - Ivan Horodyskyy (online), Dnistrianskyi Center
  • Sanctions against Russia - Gunnar Ekeløve-Slydal, Norwegian Helsinki Committee

13.20-13.40 Coffee break

13.40-14.40 Panel 4: War against Ukraine and European cooperation

Moderator: Halvard Haukeland Fredriksen, University of Bergen

  • Ukraine on the way towards the EU membership - Liliia Oprysk, University of Bergen
  • EU’s enlargement - Christophe Hillion, University of Oslo
  • War’s catalytic role in European politics - Maria Mälksoo, University of Copenhagen

Concluding remarks

Speakers

Daniil Butenko, PhD. Ukrainian social activist, researcher. Works on conceptual research of criminal (un)accountability and criminal insanity. University in Bergen, Helse Bergen Hospital Trust

Terje Einarsen is Professor of Law at University of Bergen (Norway) and Senior Research Associate, SOAS University of London. He holds a Ph.D. (Dr Juris) from the University of Bergen and a master's degree (LL.M.) from Harvard Law School. He is also a lawyer and member of the Norwegian Bar Association with permanent permission to appear before the Supreme Court. Einarsen was formerly a judge for ten years at the general Gulating High Court for the Western parts of Norway, and Head of the Human Rights Committee, Norwegian Judges' Association. He is chairperson of International Commission of Jurists, the Norwegian section (ICJ Norway) since 2018.

Gunnar M. Ekeløve-Slydal is Deputy Secretary General of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee and Director of the Coalition for International Criminal Justice (CICJ). He has studied philosophy (major), history of ideas, religion, mathematics, journalism, human rights, and multicultural understanding, and written extensively on human rights, international criminal law, and philosophical themes.

Christophe Hillion is Professor of European Law at the University of Oslo and research professor at the Norwegian Institute of International studies (NUPI). He has published on the external action and constitutional law of the European Union, and has advised various European governments (including the Ukrainian MFA) and institutions (Commission, European External Action Service, European Parliament, and Council of Europe) on those topics. He is co-editor of the Common Market Law Review, and member of the Advisory/editorial boards of the Oslo Law Review, Państwo i Prawo, and Anti-Discrimination Law Review.

Ivan Horodyskyy, Ph.D. is Director of the Dnistrianskyi Center, Vice-President of the Ukrainian Bar Association.

Maria Mälksoo is Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen. She is the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council Consolidator Grant RITUAL DETERRENCE (2022-2027) and of the Volkswagen Foundation-funded consortium project MEMOCRACY (2021-2024). Her research is in critical security studies, memory politics and political anthropology.

Artem Nazarko is a PhD candidate and MSCA4Ukraine Fellow at the University of Bergen (Norway). His doctoral thesis analyses issues of domestic prosecutions of war crimes in Ukraine during the Russian-Ukrainian war. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in international law from the National University Odesa Law Academy (Ukraine). In 2022-2023, he was a Visiting Researcher at the University of Vienna (Austria), Palacký University Olomouc (Czech Republic) and London South Bank University (United Kingdom). Artem is a Member of the National Ukrainian Bar Association.

Liliia Oprysk is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Bergen (Norway). Her research interests include the regulation of technology, Intellectual Property law, EU/ EEA law, harmonization of Ukrainian law with the EU acquis, and Ukraine's path to EU Membership. Liliia holds a PhD from the University of Tartu (Estonia) and did post-doc research at the Max-Planck Institute on Innovation and Competition in Munich (Germany).

Gaiane Nuridzhanian is a Ukrainian lawyer who specialises in international criminal law and human rights law. Gaiane holds an LLM degree from University of Cambridge and a PhD in law from University College London. She works as an associate professor at the Faculty of Law at the UiT-The Arctic University of Norway. She has previously worked as a lawyer at the European Court of Human Rights and the International Advisory Panel on Ukraine (Council of Europe).

Maryna Rabinovych is a Post-Doctoral Researcher with the Research Council of Norway-funded project “Lowering the Bar? Compliance Negotiations and the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement” at the Department of Political Science and Management, University of Agder. She is also a board member and head of the “European integration” working group with “Hromada”: Nordic-Baltic Network for Rebuilding Ukraine. Her research interests include EU external relations, EU Neighbourhood Policy, EU trade policy, as well as political and legal developments in Ukraine.

Dr Kateryna Zarembo is a social scientist, currently affiliated with the Technical University of Darmstadt and Central European University (Vienna). She is also an associate fellow at New Europe Center (Ukraine). Her research brings together security and civil society studies.