Dr. Mark Galeotti is an expert in modern Russia, especially its security politics, intelligence services and criminality, based in London. He is the director of the consultancy Mayak Intelligence and is also affiliated with a number of think tanks and universities, as an honorary professor at University College London, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and a non-resident fellow with the Institute of International Relations Prague and the Middle East Institute’s Frontier Europe Initiative. A prolific author, his most recent books are The Vory: Russia’s super mafia (Yale, 2018), Russian Political War (Routledge, 2019), We Need To Talk About Putin (Ebury, 2019) and A Short History of Russia (Hanover Square 2020). He also writes regularly for the Moscow Times, Raam op Rusland, Business New Europe and many other outlets.
He read history at Robinson College, Cambridge, and took his doctorate in politics at the London School of Economics. He has been Head of History at Keele University, Professor of Global Affairs at New York University, a visiting professor at Rutgers-Newark (Newark), Charles University (Prague) and MGIMO (Moscow), and a senior research fellow at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office.