Three years into the full-scale war in Ukraine, Russia has escalated its efforts to destabilize NATO countries and weaken support for Ukraine through intensified sabotage operations across Europe. Recent warnings from MI5 and German intelligence highlight a significant surge in Russian espionage, acts of arson, and even assassination attempts targeting facilities and leaders involved in Ukraine’s defence.

Alexei Navalny’s story exemplifies this growing threat. Following his poisoning, his return to Russia was a perilous misstep amid Putin’s assertive regime. Russia’s hybrid warfare, including cyberattacks, disinformation, and weaponized migration, poses pressing challenges to Europe’s stability and Western security.

Speakers:

Andrei Soldatov is an investigative journalist, now in exile, co-founder, and editor of Agentura.ru, an online watchdog of Russia’s security and intelligence services. Soldatov is a senior fellow with the Center For European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and a visiting fellow at King’s (Centre For the Study of Intelligence). As a journalist, Soldatov covered the terrorist attacks in Russia, the 2006 Lebanon War from Lebanon and tensions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; the rise of the Russian security state under Putin, and the role of Russia’s intelligence agencies in the war in Ukraine. With Irina Borogan, he co-authored The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB (PublicAffairs, 2010), The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries (PublicAffairs, 2015); The Compatriots: The Russian Exiles Who Fought Against the Kremlin (PublicAffairs, 2019, 2022). His new book, Our Dear Friends in Moscow, is due in June 2025.

John Sweeney is a writer and journalist who has challenged dictators, despots, cult leaders, con artists and crooked businessmen for almost half a century. As a reporter, first for the Observer and then for the BBC, he has covered wars in around 100 countries and has been undercover in the danger zones of Chechnya, North Korea and Zimbabwe. The author of 16 books, including the Sunday Times bestseller Killer in the Kremlin, he has challenged both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin face-to-face. He regularly appears on Good Morning Britain to report on life in Kyiv, where he has lived on and off since the Russian invasion.

Dr Daniela Richterova is deputy director of the King’s Centre for the Study of Intelligence, Senior Lecturer in Intelligence Studies at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. Her research and teaching focus on Cold War intelligence history as well as contemporary issues related to intelligence liaison, covert action, counterterrorism intelligence, and intelligence analysis. She also co-convenes the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, and teaches on the Cambridge Security Initiative’s specialist course in International Security and Intelligence (ISI).Prior to her career in academia, Dr Richterova worked as a researcher and analyst at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Brussels and later was head of program of GLOBSEC – The Bratislava Global Security Forum – an annual high-level conference on international security policy.Dr Richterova has published in International Affairs, The International History Review, West European Politics, and Intelligence and National Security. She is series editor for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Secret Warfare for Edinburgh University Press.

Attendance is restricted to Conduit members

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