E. I. DOROSHENKO, Candidate of Philological Sciences Leading specialist of MIA "Russia Today" Keywords: Libya, UN Security Council Resolution 1973, NATO military operations, humanitarian intervention Operation Unified Protector, one of the largest operations in the history of the last NATO military campaign in Libya, began on March 31, 2011. The general conceptual basis for it was the "Responsibility to protect" doctrine adopted by the UN. Probably, this circumstance also determined the choice of the name of the operation: in the phrase "Unified Protector", the last element," defender", corresponds to "to protect" - "protect", in the name of the doctrine, and "unified"," united", in turn, indicates a mixed composition of the forces involved.e. in this case, the role of NATO as an "alliance" or "association" is emphasized [1]. According to Florence Gob of the European Union Institute for Security Studies-EUISS (France), author of the monograph "The Alliance and Libya: a reassessment of Operation United Defender", these military actions were in many ways a "first experience" for both NATO and the United States: in particular, the "duty to protect" for the first time It was implemented in practice in order to support the civilian population of Libya in the fight against the "deadly regime" [2, p. 3]. UN Security Council resolution 1973, which, as Gob notes, provided for three measures of a "military nature": ensuring compliance with the arms embargo, establishing a no-fly zone and actually "protecting civilians", became both a concrete guide to action for the Alliance forces and a subject of significant controversy. On the one hand, the resolution prescribed the exclusion of" foreign occupation in any form", thereby limiting military intervention to actions from the air and sea, and on the other, it left a wide space for interpretation of the provision on" protection of the civilian population " [2, p. 4]. It was the ambiguity of the wording of the last point, accordin ... Read more