The Russia and Eurasia Program at The Fletcher School is pleased to award its fourth annual U.S.-Russia Relations Book Prize to political scientist Mark Galeotti for his new book Putin’s Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine (2022). The award recognizes an outstanding book on historical or contemporary foreign policy discourse pertaining to the past or present of U.S.-Russia relations. Please join us for a book talk by Galeotti about Russian warfighting and the evolution of Russian military power over the last two decades. The event is part of Tufts Global Month. Please make sure to register via myFletcher to participate in the event in person. Refreshments will be provided.

What can we infer from the fact that for all but three of Vladimir Putin’s 23 years in power, Russia has been at war in some form or another? Putin’s Wars is a timely overview of the conflicts in which Russia has been involved since Vladimir Putin became prime minister and then president of Russia, from the First Chechen War and the military incursion into Georgia to the annexation of Crimea and eventual invasion of Ukraine itself. But it also looks more broadly at Putin’s recreation of Russian military power and its expansion to include a range of new capabilities, from mercenaries to operatives in a relentless information war against Western powers. Peppered with anecdotes of military life, personal snapshots of conflicts, and an extraordinary collection of first-hand accounts from serving and retired Russian officers, this explores why and with what consequences military power and its use became central to Putin’s project to make Russia again a great power. Register via myFletcher.

Mark Galeotti is one of the world’s leading experts on Russian security affairs, which may explain why Moscow banned him indefinitely from entry last year. He read history at Cambridge and then took his doctorate in government at the London School of Economics, and after a stint with the Foreign Office has been a scholar and think tanker in London, New York, Moscow, Prague, and Florence. He heads the UK-based risk consultancy Mayak Intelligence and is an Honorary Professor at University College London and a senior associate fellow with RUSI, the Council on Geostrategy, and the Institute of International Relations Prague. He has been consulted by individuals from prime ministers to CEOs and bodies from the British Foreign Affairs Select Committee to the U.S. National Intelligence Council. A prolific author, his most recent books include Putin’s Wars: from Chechnya to Ukraine (2022), The Weaponisation of Everything (2022), We Need To Talk About Putin (2019), and The Vory: Russia’s Super Mafia (2018).