One year ago, President Vladimir Putin announced his ‘special military operation’ against Ukraine. Despite sustaining huge losses and not achieving any of his initial objectives, he remains defiant. His bitter State of the Union speech on Feb 21st, in which he hurled accusations at the West, suggests he is in no mood to take a step back.

Experts on Russia and China will discuss what Putin could do next and how strong is his support at home? Isolated from the West, to what extent can he rely on Chinese support? What do the authorities in Beijing make of the man who started, and continues to wage, the biggest war in Europe since 1945.

Speakers:

Dr Jade McGlynn is a Leverhulme Research Fellow in the War Studies department at King’s College London.l and a non-resident Senior Researcher at CSIS. She is the author of Russia’s War (2023, Polity) and Memory Makers (2023, Bloomsbury) and editor of two volumes on memory politics and history in Eastern Europe. She holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford, where she previously worked as a Lecturer in Russian. Jade’s research focuses on Russia’s war against Ukraine since 2014 as well as on national identity, memory, media and popular culture more broadly in Russia.

Kerry Brown is Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College, London. Previously he was Professor of Chinese Politics and Director of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, Australia and at Chatham House as Senior Fellow and then Head of the Asia Programme before working at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He is the author of over 20 books on modern Chinese politics.

Irina Borogan is a Russian investigative journalist, co-founder and deputy editor of Agentura.ru, a watchdog of the Russian secret services’ activities. She has covered the secret services, terrorist attacks and war conflicts in Russia and across the globe. She co-authored three books with Andrei Soldatov. The New Nobility: *Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB*, The Red Web: The Kremlin’s wars on the Internet and The Compatriots: The Russian Exiles who fought against the Kremlin.

Moderated by Chris Morris, broadcast journalist and author.

In collaboration with Conduit Impact Champion and founder of ON FRONT LINE, Pranvera Shema Smith.