The Council on Geostrategy was invited to join the Expert Network of the Crimea Platform. James Rogers, Director of Research, attended the Launch of the Expert Network in Kyiv on 6th August 2021 and spoke on one of the panels to share British experiences in dealing with Russia’s ‘discursive statecraft’, propaganda and disinformation operations.
The Crimea Platform is an initiative sponsored by Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine, to increase the effectiveness of the international response to the ongoing occupation of Crimea and mounting security threats, respond to growing security threats, increase international pressure on the Kremlin, prevent further human rights violations and protect victims of the occupation regime, and achieve the main goal – the ‘de-occupation’ of Crimea and its peaceful return to Ukraine.
I think the establishment of the Crimea Platform is vital. It creates a new forum to mobilise government officials and civil society to project truthful narratives to prevent Russia’s kleptocracy from legitimising the annexation of Ukrainian territory, as well as the act of geopolitical annexation itself. It provides a new instrument to engage in discursive statecraft on one of the ‘front lines’ of this more competitive era. It connects foreign partners to Ukrainian strategic thinkers and boosts our ability to learn from one another’s experiences in dealing with Russia’s kleptocracy. And it creates a new instrument to keep international attention on Crimea – which, as I have pointed out, is a truly geostrategic, and not only a Ukrainian, issue – until the territory is ‘de-occupied’.
James Rogers, Director of Research, Council on Geostrategy, 6th August 2021