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

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

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