According to a press release, speakers included Dr. Andreas Mavroyiannis, Cyprus Negotiator and Associate Professor at the University, and former Director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Alexandros N. Frederick. The President of the Department of Law and President of the Bar Association, Professor Christos Clerides, welcomed the conference, while Ambassador Alexandros N. Zenon took the floor first and made a historical review of the historical and geopolitical facts of Russia and Ukraine.
The President of the Department of Law and President of the Bar Association, Professor Christos Clerides, welcomed the conference, while Ambassador Alexandros N. Zenon took the floor first and made a historical review of the historical and geopolitical facts of Russia and Ukraine.
The President of the Department of Law and President of the Bar Association, Professor Christos Clerides, welcomed the conference, while Ambassador Alexandros N. Zenon took the floor first and made a historical review of the historical and geopolitical facts of Russia and Ukraine. According to the statement, the Ambassador pointed out that at the moment that two concepts are clashing, on the one hand Russia's right to its security and on the other hand Ukraine's legitimate desire and ambition to exercise full national sovereignty. He also estimated that it would be difficult to accept at the negotiating table all the conditions set by Russia, which, according to him, "has lost its international prestige, credibility and political influence".
Taking the floor, Dr. Mavroyiannis referred to the decision of the International Court of Justice in The Hague to reject Russia's claim of genocide in eastern Ukraine on the basis of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention. The ruling, issued on the day of the conference, requires Russia to immediately end military operations, he said. Dr Mavroyiannis explained that the Hague tribunal's rulings are binding, but that does not mean they will be implemented "as Ukraine is a concrete example of the weakness of the UN's collective security system". According to him, the Russian invasion of Ukraine constitutes an act of aggression, as defined in UN General Assembly Resolution 3314, while under the Organization's statute, the Security Council is the primary body charged with restoring peace and ending the invasion.
Dr. Eleni Micha, Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Law at Frederick University and a member of the Faculty of Law of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, placed the Ukrainian crisis at the centre of international criminal justice and provided information on the analysis of the three armed forms of conflict in Ukraine and the issues arising from this crisis.
Dr. George Leventis, Director of the International Security Forum and Ombudsman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), provided a geopolitical analysis of how we arrived at the Ukrainian crisis and concluded with a series of recommendations for a sustainable Security Architecture in the geopolitical space of Eurasia. According to him, the Ukrainian crisis is the culmination of a deeper crisis in the structures of the European Security Architecture. There can be no sustainable security architecture if the security of one national population group causes insecurity for another.
The network of sanctions at the international, regional and EU level was addressed by Dr Konstantinos Kouroupis, Assistant Professor at the Department of Law at Frederick University, while Dr Dimitrios Devetzis, Lecturer at the same Department, attempted to trace the consequences of the "Swift" ban on international transactions.
Dr. Kouroupis said that we are at a critical crossroads of the whole world: the present is constantly changing, balances are shifting, new challenges are emerging, the need to rebuild or revisit European military security is urgent. He pointed out that with Russia's withdrawal from the Council of Europe, the country itself - as well as its citizens - is deprived of the right to protection by the European Court of Human Rights and this is a blow to the principle of the rule of law.
Finally, Dr Devetzis analysed the scope of the consequences of the Swift ban on international transactions and the developments in the energy sector. He noted that Russian citizens are already tasting the short-term consequences of this sanctioning measure in their daily lives.
Dr Kostakis Konstantinou, Associate Professor of Political and Social Sciences at Frederick University, moderated the conference.
Source: CNA
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