Seminar „The Role of NGOs and Media in Hybrid Warfare. Ukrainian Experience Two Years after Russian Invasion” will be held on May 6 in the Glass Hall of the Hotel Bergs. The event is organized by the Centre for East European Policy Studies (CEEPS).

Experts from Ukraine will present to the audience their narration about the hybrid threats and attacks faced by their country as the result of Russia’s aggression and explain the significance of the impact of the media and NGOs and the process how the media and NGOs become a part of hybrid war. Mechanisms of hybrid threats prevention, including Ukraine’s experience in legislation sphere, will be outlined, and latest information on the situation in Ukraine’s rebel regions will be provided.

Tatyana Popova, Deputy Minister of Information Policy (Ukraine) (tbc), Vyacheslav Gusarov, Senior expert at the Center for Military-Political Research (Ukraine), Yevhen Mahda, founder of the Hybrid Warfare Resistance Bureau (Ukraine), as well as Andrejs Panteleyevs, Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Latvia will be among the speakers at the seminar. Andis Kudors, the CEEPS’s Executive director, will be the moderator of the event.

In April, the organizations which are represented by the aforementioned Ukrainian experts, publicized the themes of the seminar supplementing materials. The Hybrid Warfare Resistance Bureau issued its report “Russia – 2016: Outlines of Hybrid War” (the report in Russian is available here), and, in his turn, V.Gusarov was one of the authors of the new book “Invasion in Ukraine: Chronicle of Russia’s Aggression”, who highlighted the following idea in the book’s content: “The adversary has not only deathly mortars, sub-machine guns and missiles in its battle arsenal. In the 21st century, information is a new kind of weapons which kills without any firing, and the media sphere is a new battle-field where real fights are ongoing”.

Politicians, NGOs’ representatives, journalists and the other persons, who are interested in the aforementioned theme, are kindly invited to the seminar.

The event’s languages: Latvian and Russian.

Program available here.