As authoritarian regimes manipulate the truth and spread disinformation, their malign influence is projected beyond their borders. While focused on the present, these attacks are often rooted in the past. This is perhaps most visible, and most important, in Vladimir Putin’s attempt to rewrite the history of Ukraine while he wages a brutal and bloody war against the Ukrainian people. Just as the Kremlin launched an all-out military campaign to redraw the map of Europe, so too is Russia working to distort the history of Ukraine as well as Russia’s Soviet legacy. In doing so, the Kremlin has created a special commission to coordinate their disinformation activities, in tandem with the Russian academic community, to develop a unified approach to historical education, prevent attempts to “falsify history,” and repute the activities of foreign organizations that “damage Russia’s national interests in the historical field.”
While this memory war is directly aimed at Ukraine, Putin’s grand target is democracy and truth at large. So how can the free world better identify historical disinformation and what can be done to push back, in Ukraine and more broadly across both sides of the Atlantic? This timely discussion at the Victims of Communism Museum, in partnership with the Embassy of Lithuania, brought together academics and practitioners to help answer these questions. We hope you can join us.
Speakers:
Jeffrey Mankoff, Distinguished Research Fellow, National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies
Kateryna Smagliy, First Secretary, Embassy of Ukraine in the U.S.
Viktorija Urbonavičiūtė, Head of Strategic Communication, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania
Brian Whitmore, Nonresident senior fellow, Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center
Moderated by Michal Harmata, Director of Communications, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
