Vladimir Putin has acquired an extraordinary status in his twenty years at Russia's helm, variously the Machiavellian architect of all the West's woes, a patriotic strongman who had dragged his country from the verge of collapse, an opportunistic kleptocrat-mafioso, and an icon of traditional values abandoned in the West. The truth is, of course, somewhere in between and Mark Galeotti, author of the popular primer We Need To Talk About Putin (Ebury, 2019), will discuss the man, his evolution, and what may follow.

Mark Galeotti is an Honorary Professor at UCL SSEES and Senior Associate Fellow at RUSI, as well as running 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) and MGIMO (Moscow). A specialist in Russian security and international politics, he is also a prolific author and speaker.