Mikhail Krutikhin is a co-founder and leading analyst of RusEnergy, an independent consulting agency based in Moscow, Russia. A graduate of the Institute of Oriental Languages at the Moscow Lomonosov State University, he majored in Iranian philology in 1970, and in 1985 obtained a Ph.D. in modern history. Between 1972 and 1992, he worked at the TASS news agency on missions to Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. Since 1993, he has been analyzing opportunities and specifics of investments in the energy industry in the post-Soviet space — first with the U.S.-based Russian Petroleum Investor Inc. and then with RusEnergy. He is a permanent member of international think tanks that deal with a wide array of political and economic issues — noticeable at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Germany’s SWP and DGAP, the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University SAIS, the Canadian Energy Research Institute, and a few other prominent analytical centers.