On 24th February 2023, the Diplomatic Academy co-organised a well-attended public roundtable discussion at 14:00 at Room -M203 (Millennium Building, University of Nicosia), in cooperation with the Embassy of Ukraine, the British High Commission, the Embassy of Swededn, the Embassy of the United States, the Embassy of France, and the Embassy of Poland.
Symbolically, and given the date of 24th February, the event focused on the topic of “One year on from the Russian invasion of Ukraine: Exposing Russian disinformation“. During this Roundtable, our honorary speakers offered their insight on current affairs in Ukraine as well as their views and arguments on how Russian disinformation tactics are implemented across the globe.
Our esteemed speakers and their topics were the following:
Dr. Constantinos Adamides (Cyprus), Associate Prof. of International Relations, Associate Head Department of Politics and Governance – School of Law, Director of the Diplomatic Academy.
Role: Welcoming remarks / moderation
Olga Skrypnyk (Ukraine), Head of the Board of the Crimean Human Rights Group, Crimea Platform Expert Network.
Topic: “The Crimea occupation as a preparation for a full-scale invasion: Russian war propaganda, disinformation, hate speech”
Tom Southern (United Kingdom), Director of Special Projects at the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR).
Topic: “Combatting Ukraine fatigue – Russia’s disinformation efforts to encourage apathy towards the war”
Per Enerud (Sweden), Senior Analyst at the Swedish Psychological Defence Agency
Topic: “The Anatomy of Lying – What Makes Kremlin Disinformation Work?”
Dr. James Derleth (United States), Professor of Irregular Warfare and Course Director, Seminar in Hybrid Threats at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies
Topic: “Why it didn’t work: Russian Disinformation in the 2022 Invasion”
Anaïs Llobet (France), Journalist at the Agency France Presse (AFP) covering the Middle East, former reporter at the Moscow AFP office, fiction writer
Topic: “Facing Russian disinformation: the role of factchecking and journalism”
Wojciech Jakóbik (Poland – online), BiznesAlert.pl co-founder and editor-in-chief, International Relations editorial board member, Eastern Europe Collegium lecturer at the University of
Warsaw
Topic: “War of exhaustion: energy crisis as another tool in Russian disinformation campaign”
