On October 11, in London, the Army and Navy Club hosted Dinner-seminar “Inside the Kremlin – What’s next for President Putin”, organized by the Defense and Security Forum. The speakers represented three spheres of foreign policy: the Foreign Service was represented by Sir Tony Brenton, former British Ambassador to Russia, the Foreign Intelligence Service was represented by the former head of MI6, Sir John Scarlett, and the Research was represented by professor Mark Galeotti from School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University of London.
A week later, I took part in the two-day “Battle of Ideas” conference organized by the Academy of Ideas, where among many topics and problems that are relevant today, the participants discussed war in Ukraine, as well as the situation in Russia.
I was surprised by one feature common to all speakers at those events: no one spoke about what happened just few days before.
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