Please join the Fletcher Eurasia Club for a lunch seminar with Polina Beliakova, a Fletcher alumna and Postdoctoral Fellow at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College.

What explains the difference between Russian and Ukrainian military performance in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Most analyses on the subject focus on Western support for Ukraine, pervasive corruption in the Russian defense sector, and Russia’s poor intelligence capabilities. This conversation will assess another crucial and often overlooked component of this puzzle: civil-military relations. Beliakova will explain how the complex and deteriorating relationships between the Russian government, its armed forces, and the broader society contribute to Russia’s subpar military performance. She will also contrast it with the state-society-military relations in Ukraine that amplify the battlefield effectiveness of the Ukrainian armed forces.

We encourage you to read her recent articles on the erosion of civilian control of the military in democracies and corruption in the Russian military. The Eurasia Club weekly lunch seminar series engages with students, faculty, staff, and researchers to foster a better understanding of the region among members of the Fletcher community. Members of the wider Tufts community are also welcome to attend. Lunch will be served. Click here to register.

Polina Beliakova is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College and an incoming Research Fellow at MIT’s Security Studies Program. Her research focuses on the interplay between government security policies and civil-military relations. Her book project Don’t Blame the Generals: The Policy-Focused Theory of Civilian Control considers how civilian policymakers create conducive conditions for the military’s interference in politics. Her articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, War on the Rocks, Washington Post, POLITICO, Comparative Political Studies, and Texas National Security Review. Being a native Ukrainian speaker with proficiency in Russian, Beliakova directs her ongoing research toward Russia’s use of force in Ukraine, Ukrainian defense, and security sector governance. She received her Ph.D. from The Fletcher School at Tufts University.