Professor Jean-Pierre Filiu, a great friend of Ukraine, has once again visited Kyiv. His lecture, “Ukraine and the Middle East,” delivered to political science students, drew the attention of both faculty members and alumni of our European Studies program.
The count-down to the current Russian aggression against Ukraine started in Syria, in August 2013, when Barack Obama backed down on his own “red lines” after the Assad regime’s chemical bombings of insurgent suburbs from Damascus. Vladimir Putin was then convinced that any aggression against Ukraine would remain undeterred and went through, six months later, with the annexation of Crimea and the launching of an “hybrid” war in Donbass. During the following eight years, the Russian protectorate over Syria transformed this country in a laboratory of war techniques and drone manufactures that would be used intensively against Ukraine after the February 2022 full-scale invasion. Now it is less Russia than the USA that nurture from the Middle East their hostility toward Ukraine, with Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff extending his field of action from the Middle East to Ukraine.
Jean-Pierre Filiu is professor of Middle East Studies at Sciences Po, Paris School of International Affairs. He was a visiting professor at the universities of Columbia (New York) and Georgetown (Washington). His books have been widely translated in some twenty languages. He taught at the NAUKMA in February 2023 a course. His weekly column in the French daily “Le Monde”, published in French and English, has already attracted millions of readers.
Recent Professor Filiu’s publication for Le Monde :
👉 Our world as seen from Kyiv – Le Monde
Watch his interview for Channel 24 via the link.