When did your interest in Russia begin?
I began Russian language lessons when I was 13, during the time of Glasnost and Perestroika. Russia looked exciting – it was opening up and there was a new type of politician in the Kremlin. I first visited Russia in 1991, the year the USSR collapsed, and returned many times: I spent my gap year living there, did a year abroad during my Russian and Italian degree, and worked for a now-defunct English language newspaper in Moscow the year after graduating. I came back to the UK to join Chatham House in 2000 as a programme administrator. What began as a love for the language and culture evolved into an interest in the region’s politics over my 25 years at the institute.
How has your perspective towards Russia changed over the years?
Russia hasn’t turned out like any of us hoped. In the 1990s it was pretty wild but I thought that Russia would carry on its rocky path to becoming a westernized, democratic country. But looking at Russia’s history, periods of democracy and a pro-western orientation are the exception. The provisional government under Alexander Kerensky in 1917 and a portion of the Yeltsin years were short punctuation marks in a much longer and sadder history of autocracy and crackdowns.
I actually met Putin in 2004 during his first presidential term. Being the only other member of the Russia and Eurasia Programme beside its head, I think I was invited by accident! It was a few days after the Beslan massacre, in which terrorists took over a school in southern Russia and killed 186 children. When we met Putin, he got the numbers wrong and blamed the attack on the West. In our post-information world this is becoming normalized, but at the time it was a clear signal of Russia’s slide away from democracy.
Despite the outcome, was meeting Putin a highlight of your time at Chatham House?
It was certainly interesting but meeting a head of state isn’t nearly as exciting as being in the presence of the inspiring experts I have had the privilege of meeting across a range of fields in Chatham House.
I’ve also been able to travel to 14 of the 15 countries in the region – barring Turkmenistan. A sin in the corporate and diplomatic worlds is looking at everything through the prism of Russia, and Chatham House really challenges this. I began visiting these countries when I wasn’t doing much more than carrying the bags, but it formed my understanding of the people. You realize that each Eurasian country is as distinct from Russia as Ireland is from England, and this informed the first principle of the current incarnation of the Russia and Eurasia Programme: the sovereignty and independence of all countries in the region.
Your programme anticipated Russia’s expansionist aims. What in the region isn’t receiving enough attention?
The idea that the post-Soviet countries will always be in Russia’s orbit is too fatalistic. Realism to me means being realistic about the nature of the Kremlin and what it’s prepared to do to pursue its ambitions. Our research has always given credence to Russia’s aims, which meant that the programme put out several research papers before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 warning something like that was on the cards. Orysia Lutsevych, the deputy programme director, heads the Ukraine Forum which we created after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. At that point it was obvious Ukraine warranted a dedicated platform given the threat from Russia, even when this wasn’t taken seriously elsewhere.