20200922 Russian Globally Integrated Operations (GIO) Part 3: Polar Power - Russian Energy and Globally Integrated Operations

Lead Speaker: Dr. Nazrin Mehdiyeva

Geopolitics and Energy Security Specialist

Dr. Nazrin Mehdiyeva is a geopolitics and energy security specialist, working with governments, international institutions and energy majors. She is a regular contributor to the debate on the future of European energy security and her articles are published in academic and industry journals. She has lectured at NATO Defense College and written for the Oxford Changing Character of War Centre as well as for NATO. Nazrin is a co-author of Beyond Blood Oil: Philosophy, Policy, and the Future (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018) and the author of Power Games in the Caucasus (I.B. Tauris, 2011).

Panelist: Andrew Monaghan, Ph.D.

Director, Russia Research Network Ltd

Non-Resident Associate Fellow, NATO Defence College, Rome

Dr. Andrew Monaghan is Director of the Russia Research Network Ltd. Additionally he is a Non-Resident Associate Fellow of the NATO Defence College in Rome (where he is also the Commissioning Editor of the Russian Studies publication series), Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London, and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. He has previously worked for the Oxford Changing Character of War Centre, Chatham House, NATO and the UK Defence Academy. He has advised various governments and international organisations, as well as major companies. He has served as an expert witness to several parliamentary committees, including the UK’s National Security Strategy Committee, the House of Commons Defence and Foreign Affairs Select Committees, and NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly. He is widely published and is the author of several books, including Dealing with the Russians (Polity, 2019), Power in Modern Russia (MUP, 2017) and The New Politics of Russia (MUP 2016).

Panelist: Dr. Alexander J. Kent

Reader in Cartography and Geographic Information Science

Canterbury Christ Church University

Dr Alexander J. Kent is Reader in Cartography and Geographic Information Science at Canterbury Christ Church University and Immediate Past President of the British Cartographic Society. Editor of The Cartographic Journal (Taylor & Francis), he is widely published and has written for the Oxford Changing Character of War Centre and for NATO. He is the co-author of the book The Red Atlas: How the Soviet Union Secretly Mapped the World (University of Chicago Press, 2017) and the co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Mapping and Cartography (Routledge, 2017).

Panelist: Charles Bartles

Analyst and Russian Linguist

Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

Charles Bartles is an analyst and Russian linguist at the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. His research areas include Russian and Central Asian military force structure, tactics, modernization, and Soviet/Russian military mapping. Chuck is also a Major in the US Army Reserve that has deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, and has served as a security assistance officer at embassies in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. He is the co-author of the book The Russian Way of War: Force Structure,Tactics, and the Modernization of the Russian Ground Forces (Mentor, 2017).

Panelist: Dr. Richard Connolly

Director of the Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies (CREES)

Senior lecturer in political economy at the University of Birmingham

Richard Connolly is director of the Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies (CREES) and senior lecturer in political economy at the university of Birmingham. His research and teaching are principally concerned with the political economy of Russia and Eurasia. In the past, he has carried out research on Russia's energy, defence and high-technology sectors, as well as on Russia's role in the global economy.

He is also an associate fellow on the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House, visiting professor on the Master of Global Public Policy (MGPP) programme at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, and he is editor of Post-Communist Economies.

Dr. Connolly has presented his research to a wide range of academic and non-academic audiences, including UK and US government officials, the International Trade Committee of the European Parliament, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Organisation for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE), and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

He is currently working on assessing how Western sanctions are affecting the Russian economy and its place in the global economy. His most recently-published work on this subject is the monograph, Russia's Response to Sanctions, published by Cambridge University Press in July 2018.