This individual is a guest contributor. MEI is not able to assist with contact requests.
Mark Galeotti is a specialist on Russian politics and security affairs. He is 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, a Senior Research Fellow with the Foreign Office, Professor of Global Affairs at New York University, and a visiting professor at Rutgers-Newark (Newark, NJ), Charles University (Prague), the European University Institute (Florence), and MGIMO (Moscow).
He advises on Russian politics and activities abroad to a wide range of audiences, from the British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, the FBI to commercial organizations. He is currently working on a study of future forms of non-kinetic conflict and an exploration of the impact of the Russian intelligence and security services on the country’s politics, business, and society.
Kavkaz 2020: Russia’s latest military exercise highlights its strengths and limitations as a regional hegemon
Kavkaz 2020, the latest in Russia’s series of major military exercises, demonstrated its burgeoning military capabilities on its southern flank. Several lessons for both the region and outside observers can be drawn from the exercise, but when juxtaposed with the subsequent flare-up of hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan, they emphasise not just Russia’s strengths but also its limitations.
Proxies, spies and saboteurs: How Georgia can identify, resist and deter covert and deniable threats
Georgia has experienced the full spectrum of Russian aggression, from direct military action to covert subversion and proxy operations. Nonetheless, while there are undoubted challenges for such a small country in resisting this threat, there are certainly opportunities for Georgia and for Western nations eager to support. After all, the latter should understand that they have as much to learn in Georgia as to teach.
