WHEN:

Wed, April 19, 2017, 13:00

WHERE:

The House of Commons, Committee Room 10, London, SW1A 0AA

Admission:

Free with registration. Please register here

British-Ukrainian Aid welcomes you to the presentation “Why Ukraine Matters: At the Frontline of Europe`s Forgotten War and Humanitarian Crisis” by Dr Rainer-Elk Anders, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Staffordshire. The event is hosted by Sir Gerald Howard MP at 13.00-14.00 on Wednesday 19th April 2017 at the House of Commons, committee room 10.

The year 2017 marks the third year of war in Ukraine and an increasingly grave humanitarian crisis. UN statistics of war give us a stark account: over 1.7 million Ukrainians have lost their homes and become displaced persons, 10,000 Ukrainians have been killed and over 22,000 injured, and the number of children urgently needing humanitarian aid in Eastern Ukraine has doubled to 1 million within the last 12 months. But rarely the extent of tragedy and sacrifice in Ukraine is given sufficient time and space in European media and politics, or a human face.

Combining recent film footage and photos with thorough analysis, this presentation will provide a close first-hand account of the current situation in Eastern Ukraine, in particular of the humanitarian crisis children and their families are facing in the war zone, with a focus on Marinka, Krasnohorivka and Avdiivka; the role of the civil volunteer movement and their support of regular and volunteer armed forces in ATO; and the actual situation of regular army and volunteer battalions on the front-line. The presentation will conclude with an analysis of the implications of the war in Ukraine for European and British security, and why a response to the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine matters.

Dr Rainer-Elk Anders is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Staffordshire working for the Division of Criminal Justice and Forensic Science at the School of Law, Policing and Forensics. He studied at the University of Göttingen and the University of California at Berkeley, and received his MPhil from the University of Birmingham and PhD in Social Science from the University of Warwick. Since February 2014, he has been conducting research projects in Ukraine, initially during the Maidan in Kyiv, then tracking the “men in green” in Eastern Ukraine, and reporting about the occupation of Sloviansk. Since the summer of 2014 he has been on numerous visits to Eastern Ukraine and ATO, conducting fieldwork with different Ukrainian battalions, and being actively involved in humanitarian aid projects with Ukrainian volunteer groups. His most recent visit was in February and March 2017 to Marinka, Krasnohorivka and Avdiivka, as well as to the sites of the on-going blockades of the occupied areas.