Breakfast Session under the Chatham House Rule

Burning the Archive: When Memory Becomes a Battlefield

May 17, 08:30-09:45

Room: Berlin

Through laws criminalising language and missiles aimed at museums, renaming the streets and rewriting textbooks, Russia has pursued—both domestically and in the occupied territories—the systematic destruction of the physical fabric that makes people’s history legible to themselves. And devoid of the past, they cannot write the future. What drives Russia’s memory warfare—imperial ideology, calculated strategy, or both? How does the Kremlin convert history into a weapon? How do nations fight back, even under occupation or in exile, and protect memory as a strategic asset? How can the international community document, preserve, and restore what is being deliberately destroyed?