What does Russia truly want? Global recognition as a great power, or simply more territory? Does Vladimir Putin's imperialist agenda threaten European security beyond Ukraine's borders? How can Western democracies negotiate with an authoritarian regime whose fundamental objectives differ so starkly from their own? And how does Putin’s bromance with Trump serve Russia’s wider strategic purpose?
Russian strategy expert Andrew Monaghan is joined by Eastern European specialist Jade McGlynn and cyber security and intelligence expert Septimus Knox to explore why understanding Russia's true objectives is essential to global stability in an increasingly fragmented international order.
Dr Andrew Monaghan (Blitzkrieg and the Russian Art of War)is a specialist on Russia’s evolving grand strategy and way in war, as well as Moscow’s thinking about the future in the new age of Great Power competition. He has led research on Russia at the NATO Defence College in Rome, and at Oxford University’s Changing Character of War Centre. He has also held positions at the UK’s Defence Academy and as a Senior Research Fellow at Chatham House. He is a Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London and a Fellow at the Kennan Institute in Washington, D.C.
Jade McGlynn (Memory Makers: The Politics of the Past in Putin’s Russia. Bloomsbury) is a Leverhulme EC Researcher in the War Studies department at King’s College London. She holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford, where she previously worked as a Lecturer in Russian. She is a frequent contributor to international media, including BBC, CNN, DW, Foreign Policy, The Times, The Telegraph and The Spectator. Jade researchers the Ukrainian territories currently occupied by Russia and studies sociopolitical trends and direct and indirect attitudes towards the war in Ukraine and Russia, including via frequent fieldwork in east Ukraine.
Septimus Knox is a Director at S-RM, a London-headquartered intelligence and cyber security business. He specialises in gathering intelligence to support complex, multijurisdictional disputes globally. He has been repeatedly recognised as one of the UK’s leading private sector investigators and has wide-ranging experience of operating in the world’s most challenging environments. He has particular expertise in disputes relating to Russia and has worked on some of the most high-profile cases relating to the region. In recent years, he has advised numerous businesses affected by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Septimus’ analysis of current affairs has been widely published (FT, Newsweek, World Economic Forum, BNE IntelliNews and the Moscow Times). He speaks Russian, has lived in, and travelled extensively across Russia, Ukraine and the wider Former Soviet Union.
