Link to Video Recording
Abstract:
Russia's Spetsnaz special forces perform a wide range of roles, but while their organization and doctrine have been widely discussed, much less is known about the soldiers themselves, their origins, and even their own sense of their role. Drawing on a unique collection of interviews as well as analysis of social media channels, Mark Galeotti will consider not just the force's future, but the concerns and interests of the Spetsnaz themselves.
Biographies
Dr Mark Galeotti is the director of the London-based consultancy Mayak Intelligence Ltd, as well as an Honorary Professor at University College London and a Senior Associate Fellow at RUSI. He read history at Cambridge and took his doctorate in government at the London School of Economics, and has since been Head of History at Keele University, a Senior Research Fellow with the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Professor of Global Affairs at New York University, and a visiting professor at Rutgers-Newark (Newark, NJ), Charles University (Prague) and MGIMO (Moscow). A specialist in Russian security and international politics, his most recent books include The Vory: Russia’s super mafia (Yale, 2018), We Need To Talk About Putin (Ebury, 2019), The Weaponisation of Everything (Yale, 2022) and the forthcoming Putin’s Wars (Osprey-Bloomsbury, 2022).
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