[129] MTSU welcomes Belarus natives for discussion of media as Russian warfare tool

MURFREESBORO — Two political activists will address the impact of Russian propaganda with an audience at MTSU.

Oleg Manaev and Maryna Bahdanovich, who are husband and wife, will speak about “The Role of Media within the Slavic Triangle (Belarus, Russia and Ukraine)” from 2 to 4 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 18, in Room 106 of the Paul W. Martin Sr. Honors Building. The event is open to the public.

Bahdanovich and Manaev will explain the public attitudes toward media in the countries of the Slavic Triangle and the impact of media from Russia and other authoritarian states in countries that gained independence with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

With the 2014 Russian annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea and the resulting bloodshed, Russian media came to be considered part of “hybrid warfare,” a strategy combining cyberwarfare with conventional warfare.

Bahdanovich has an extensive history both as an officeholder and a behind-the-scenes political operative. She was vice chair of the United Civic Party in Belarus from 2000 to 2005. She also served as an organizer for various political campaigns in Russia and a member of monitoring missions for campaigns in Ukraine, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and the United Kingdom.

Manaev has been a visiting professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville since 2015. He is a founder of the Independent Institute of Socioeconomic and Political Studies in Minsk, Belarus.

“Oleg Manaev is also a well-known sociologist who was in charge of the leading polling center in (Belarus) and represented a number of Western nongovernmental and grant-giving organizations over there,” said Andrei Korobkov, a professor in the MTSU Department of Political Science and International Relations.

Off-campus visitors should obtain a special one-day permit from MTSU’s Office of Parking and Transportation at http://www.mtsu.edu/parking/visit.php. A printable campus parking map is available at http://tinyurl.com/MTSUParkingMap.

For more information, contact Korobkov at 615-898-2945 or andrei.korobkov@mtsu.edu.