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Shaping public policy on Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe

Professor Andrew Wilson has helped to underpin the development of policy planning towards Russia and the six countries of the Eastern Partnership, the EU and other international institutions.

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28 April 2022

Advising leading bodies and organisations 

Professor Andrew Wilson (UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies) was asked to brief Prime Minister David Cameron after the revolutionary Maidan events in Ukraine in February 2014.

Professor Wilson headed a team of Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) experts conducting a Needs Assessment Report for the deported peoples in Crimea in 2013-14.

His research and briefings on the Azov Sea crisis were used by the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) in 2018, including during their rotating membership of the UN Security Council, and this has carried forward to their chairing the OSCE.

He has been in high demand for analysis and comment during the Belarus crisis in 2020-1 (by EU member-states’ MFAs; UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office FCDO; George Marshall Center for Security Studies).

Professor Wilson advises the FCDO several times a year at private briefings. The FCDO uses these meetings to help shape internal policy papers or brief new officials, such as incoming ambassadors for Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, or officials in London who are briefing ministers.  

The use of Russian political tactics  

Professor Wilson’s 2005 book, ‘Virtual Politics’, was the first academic study of what Russians call ‘political technology’ – informal practices of political manipulation and media control.

Since 2005, such technology has metastasised in Russia, spread to the rest of the former USSR, and above all captured the world’s attention with the launch of ‘hybrid war’ against Ukraine in 2014 and Russian interference in the 2016 US elections.

In October 2014, he published the first major book on these issues, ‘Ukraine Crisis: What it Means for the West’, based largely on interview evidence and local media sources, and rebutting the prevalent argument that this was a Ukrainian ‘civil war’.

Professor Wilson’s publications helped inform the heated academic and policy debate around the Maidan Revolution, the annexation of Crimea, the war in east Ukraine, and sanctions against Russia, plus the impact on the broader region, especially neighbouring states like Belarus, and the spread of Russian ‘political technology’ techniques to the rest of the world.   

Recommendations on the current crisis 

Since the Ukraine crisis, in 2022, Professor Wilson has briefed the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, the FCDO, the Cabinet Office and the UK embassy in Ukraine.

His private written briefing for UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, subsequently published by the Royal United Services Institute, was directly quoted in Wallace’s op-ed for The Times (17 January 2022).  
 

Research synopsis

Public Policy on Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe: The Global Impact of Russian ‘Active Measures

Research and advocacy by Professor Andrew Wilson helped underpin the development of policy planning towards Russia and the six countries of the Eastern Partnership by European Union (EU) Member States, the EU and other international institutions. Regular closed-door briefings at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Cabinet Office have informed new UK ambassadors to the region and helped with the drafting of in-house policy papers.

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