GCRI Director Kris Stoddart (left) and Keir Giles (right)
Date: 17 June 2024
Speaker: Keir Giles, Senior Consulting Fellow with the Russia and Eurasia Programme of the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, and Director of the Conflict Studies Research Centre (CSRC)
Event description:
What kind of future lies in store for Europe depends on the outcome of the conflict in Ukraine. But the same is also true of Russia's own future path. Any prospect of near-term political or social change in Russia depends on how the country will respond to victory or defeat.
In this talk, Keir Giles considered not only variables and unknowns that depend on the future course of the war, but also the constants and objective factors that will constrain the possible paths of Russia's future development. He discusses both the scope for political upheaval in Russia following defeat, and the limits to that scope imposed both by the current Russian government and the nature of Russia's history and society.
Drawing on decades of studying - and accurately predicting - Russia, he places the current episode in the broader sweep of history, and considers what that can and cannot tell us about what to expect from Moscow next.