Mark Galeotti - Criminality, Conflict and Deception: Russia's Hybrid Warfare Transforms to Total War

<p>The invasion of Crimea and the Donbas in 2014 has now been overshadowed &nbsp;by the full-scale war across Ukraine. But understanding the shadowy and &nbsp;obscure ways in which the conflict began and developed prior to 2022 may &nbsp;help to highlight potential risks for a post-conflict order. Russia’s &nbsp;hybrid warfare strategy may have played a leading role in igniting and &nbsp;fuelling the conflict, but crime and insurgency are intimately &nbsp;interconnected in the Kremlin playbook. The boundaries between mafia &nbsp;criminality, the security forces and government are hopelessly blurred &nbsp;in Russia, and nowhere more so than in the occupied territories of &nbsp;Ukraine. The Kremlin is opportunistic and co-opts all kinds of actors, &nbsp;from businesses and gangsters to politicians and educators as tools and &nbsp;proxies. A Ukrainian victory will not only require the seizing back of &nbsp;territory, but an effort to root Russian assets, networks and &nbsp;accomplices and roll back propagandist media and the penetration of the &nbsp;occupied territories by criminal elements. I’m joined by world-renowned &nbsp;academic Mark Galeotti today to unravel this murky and terrifying Ruskii &nbsp;Mir. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p>

<p>Mark Galeotti is an author and academic – by training an historian – but &nbsp;in practice an interdisciplinary scholar with interests encompassing &nbsp;politics, criminology, security studies, international relations, and &nbsp;anthropology. He is a specialist in transnational and organized crime, &nbsp;security affairs, Russian Politics, Russian History, Intelligence and &nbsp;Security. Mark has a PhD in Government from LSE and has worked as a Senior &nbsp;Lecturer and Head of Department of History at Keele University. I can’t &nbsp;list all his numerous achievements, but he is a Principal Director at &nbsp;Mayak Intelligence, and is an Honorary Professor, SSEES at UCL. He is a &nbsp;Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. He has &nbsp;also been Professor of Global Affairs at New York University from 2009 &nbsp;to 2016. &nbsp;Make Galeotti has written on a dizzying array of topics and published &nbsp;numerous books covering Russian foreign and security policy, the Soviet &nbsp;war in Afghanistan, Soviet and Russian militaries, organised crime, as &nbsp;well as the Russian leaders: Mikhail Gorbachev and Vladimir Putin. At &nbsp;present Mark is working on a survey of Russia’s military since 1991 – &nbsp;which is likely a challenge given the rapid degradation of that military &nbsp;in Ukraine since February, and he’s also researching the security and &nbsp;intelligence services and their impact on Russian politics and society.</p>