Link to Video Recording
Details: RSI will be joined by Roy Allison, Anna Borshchevskaya, Hanna Notte, and Paul Stronski to discuss Russia's broad strategic interests in the Middle East region as well as specific implications of Russia's actions in the Black Sea, Eastern Mediterranean, and Syria that support Russia's long-term objectives in the Middle East.
Format: Each panelist will present for 5-7 minutes followed by guided discussion & 30 minutes of Q&A
Agenda:
1500-1540CET/0900-0940EDT: Panelist Remarks1540-1600CET/0940-1000EDT: Guided Discussion1600-1630CET/1000-1030EDT: Question & Answer Session
Biographies
Roy AllisonProfessor of Russian and Eurasian International Relations, University of OxfordDirector, Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies, St. Antony’s College
Anna BorshchevskayaSenior Fellow, The Washington InstituteFellow, European Foundation for Democracy
Anna Borshchevskaya is a senior fellow at The Washington Institute, focusing on Russia's policy toward the Middle East. In addition, she is a contributor to Oxford Analytica and a fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy. She was previously with the Atlantic Council and the Peterson Institute for International Economics. A former analyst for a U.S. military contractor in Afghanistan, she has also served as communications director at the American Islamic Congress. Her analysis is published widely in publications such as Foreign Affairs, The Hill, The New Criterion, and Middle East Quarterly. She is the author of the upcoming book, Putin's War in Syria: Russian Foreign Policy and the Price of America's Absence (I.B. Tauris, November 2021, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing). Until recently, she conducted translation and analysis for the U.S. Army's Foreign Military Studies Office and its flagship publication, Operational Environment Watch, and wrote a foreign affairs column for Forbes. She is the author of the February 2016 Institute monograph, Russia in the Middle East. She holds an MA, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS); and a doctorate from George Mason University.
Hanna NotteSenior Research Associate, Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation
Dr. David Kilcullen is Professor of International and Political Studies at the University of New South Wales, Canberra, Professor of Practice at Arizona State University, and CEO of the geopolitical risk analysis firm Cordillera Applications Group. He previously founded and led the global consulting firm Caerus Associates, and the technology firm First Mile Geo (now Native). Professor Kilcullen is a leading theorist and practitioner of guerrilla and unconventional warfare, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, with operational experience over a 25-year career with the Australian and U.S. governments as a light infantry officer, intelligence officer, policy adviser and diplomat. He served in Iraq as senior counterinsurgency advisor to U.S. General David Petraeus, then as a senior counterterrorism advisor to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and has served in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya and Colombia. He is the author of five prize-winning books and numerous scholarly papers on terrorism, insurgency, urbanization and future warfare, and was awarded the 2015 Walkley Award (Australia’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize) for longform journalism for his war reporting on the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. He heads the Future Operations Research Group at UNSW Canberra, and teaches Masters courses on contemporary strategy, special operations, urban warfare and military innovation and adaptation at UNSW and ASU. He has led several concept-design projects for U.S. and allied governments, and currently works with national and city-level governments and commercial firms in the United States, Australia, Africa, Latin America and Europe on risk prediction, urban development, public safety, resilience and counterterrorism. He worked for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Afghanistan, and continues to work with advanced research agencies in the United States, Canada, UK and elsewhere, focused on technology, artificial intelligence and future conflict. He is a special adviser to the South Africa-based Brenthurst Foundation.
Paul StronskiSenior Fellow, Russia and Eurasia ProgramCarnegie Endowment for International Peace
Paul Stronski is a senior fellow in Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Program, where his research focuses on the relationship between Russia and neighboring countries in Central Asia and the South Caucasus.Until January 2015, Stronski served as a senior analyst for Russian domestic politics in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. He was director for Russia and Central Asia on the U.S. National Security Council Staff from 2012 to 2014, where he supported the president, the national security advisor, and other senior U.S. officials on the development and coordination of policy toward Russia. Before that, he worked as a State Department analyst on Russia from 2011 to 2012, and on Armenia and Azerbaijan from 2007 to 2010. A former career U.S. foreign service officer, Stronski served in Hong Kong from 2005 to 2007.Stronski has taught history and post-Soviet affairs at Stanford, George Mason, and George Washington universities. Prior to his government service, he worked on a USAID-sponsored technical assistance project for the healthcare sector in Central Asia.He is the author of Tashkent: Forging a Soviet City, 1930-1966 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), which won the 2011 Central Eurasian Studies Society Book Award for History and the Humanities. Since the mid-1990s, he has undertaken extensive research and work experience in Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Armenia.An Honorary Professor at UCL SSEES, Senior Associate Fellow at RUSI, and a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Institute of International Relations Prague, he also runs his own consultancy, Mayak Intelligence. He read history at Robinson College Cambridge and took his doctorate in government at the LSE, and has since been Head of History at Keele University, Professor of Global Affairs at New York University, and a visiting professor at Rutgers-Newark (Newark, NJ), Charles University (Prague) and MGIMO (Moscow).
He served a term as a Senior Research Fellow with the British Foreign Office, and has also advised a wide range of agencies and institutions, from the UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee and NATO Parliamentary Assembly, to Europol and SHAPE.He is also a prolific author, and his most recent books include We Need To Talk About Putin (Ebury, 2021), Russian Political War (Routledge, 2019), The Vory: Russia’s super mafia (Yale, 2018), and Spetsnaz: Russia’s Special Forces (Osprey, 2015). His next book, The Weaponisation of Everything, will be published by Yale University Press in 2022.