Ellison Center UW

TALK | Our Enemies will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence by Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov. Thursday, October 10, 2024 from 6:00–7:30 pm at the University of Washington in HUB Room 145. This talk is free and open to the public but registration is required. Learn more and register! https://bit.ly/3Uk77o2

TITLE: RUSSIA AND UKRAINE: ENTANGLED HISTORIES, DIVERGING STATES with Oxana Shevel (Tufts University)
WHEN: May 2, 2024 from 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM
WHERE: Husky Union Building Room 214
RSVP HERE:
https://events.uw.edu/event/4cc90b54-7b4c-452a-a17e-92425b21cb15/summary

TALK DESCRIPTION:
In February 2022, Russian missiles rained on Ukrainian cities and tanks rolled towards Kyiv to end Ukrainian independent statehood. President Zelensky declined a western evacuation offer and rallied the army and citizens to defend Ukraine. What are the roots of this war which has devastated Ukraine, upended the international legal order, and brought back the spectre of nuclear escalation? How is it that these supposedly “brotherly peoples” became each other’s worst nightmare?

In Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Divergent States, Maria Popova and Oxana Shevel explain how over the last thirty years Russia and Ukraine diverged politically ending up on a catastrophic collision course. Russia slid back into authoritarianism and imperialism, while Ukraine consolidated a competitive political system and pro-European identity. As Ukraine built a democratic nation-state, Russia refused to accept it and came to see it as an “anti-Russia” project. After political pressure and economic levers proved ineffective and even counterproductive, Putin went to war to force Ukraine back into the fold of the “Russian world.” Ukraine resisted, determined to pursue European integration as a sovereign state. These irreconcilable goals, rather than geopolitical wrangling between Russia and the West over NATO expansion, are – the authors argue – essential to understanding Russia’s war on Ukraine.

TITLE: CENTRAL ASIA IN THE SHADOW OF RUSSIA'S WAR
WHEN: April 23, 2024 from 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM
WHERE: Online via Zoom
RSVP HERE: https://washington.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_0vYQCDH8R5WybQ5IgoIm4g

PANELISTS:
Nargis Kassenova is a senior fellow and director of the Program on Central Asia at the Davis Center. Prior to joining the center she was an associate professor at the Department of International Relations and Regional Studies of KIMEP University (Almaty, Kazakhstan). She is the former founder and director of the KIMEP Central Asian Studies Center (CASC) and the China and Central Asia Studies Center (CCASC). Kassenova holds a Ph.D. in international cooperation studies from the Graduate School of International Development, Nagoya University (Japan). Her research focuses on Central Asian politics and security, Eurasian geopolitics, China’s Belt and Road Initiative, governance in Central Asia, and the history of state-making in Central Asia. Kassenova is a member of the Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia Division, the U.N. High-Level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs, the Central Eurasian Studies Society board, and the Steering Committee of the OSCE Network of Thinktanks and Academic Institutions. She is on the editorial boards of the journals Central Asian Survey, Central Asian Affairs, and REGION: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia.

Temur Umarov is a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. His research is focused on Central Asian countries’ domestic and foreign policies, as well as China’s relations with Russia and Central Asian neighbors. A native of Uzbekistan, Temur Umarov has degrees in China studies and international relations from the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, and Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO). He holds an MA in world economics from the University of International Business and Economics (Beijing). He is also an alumnus of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center’s Young Ambassadors and the Carnegie Endowment’s Central Asian Futures programs.

This webinar will be moderated by Scott Radnitz (Director of the Ellison Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies at the University of Washington).