Economic and Financial Dimensions of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Matthew Light studies migration control, policing and criminal justice, and public and citizen security, primarily in the post-Soviet region. His book (Routledge 2016) and several related articles on Russian federal and regional migration policies in the aftermath of the breakup of the USSR analyze what forms of freedom of movement emerged in the new post-Soviet Russian state, and frames the Soviet and post-Soviet experience with migration management in comparative international perspective. Light’s recent work concerns policing and other aspects of public and citizen security in several post-Soviet countries, including Russia, Georgia, and Armenia, and examines the evolution of both public policing institutions and private provision of security in the region.

Professor Margarita M. Balmaceda, Professor of Diplomacy and International Relations, joined the School of Diplomacy and International Relations in 1999. She teaches courses on the Politics of Ethnic and Cultural Diversity, on Post-Soviet and East European Politics and Foreign Policies, as well on Master's Research Project. Currently she is an Associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University. A specialist on the comparative energy politics of the post-Soviet states, since 2000 she has been “following the pipeline” – i.e. following the complex web of interconnections that accompany the energy relationship between Russian oil and gas producers, post-Soviet transit states, and European consumers. This research agenda has taken her on multiple field research stays in Eastern Europe and the former USSR, including Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Hungary and Moldova. Support from three Fulbright Awards, as well as funding from the Ford Foundation, the, Humboldt Foundation, the DAAD and many other foundations, has made possible such ambitious research agenda. Fluent in Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian, German, near-fluent in Hungarian and with a good working knowledge of Belarusian, Dr. Balmaceda feels very much at home almost everywhere in Eastern Europe. And with the strong international presence at the School of Diplomacy and International Relations, she is happy to use her language skills in many one-to one discussions with her students.

Sam Greene is professor in Russian politics and Director of the Russia Institute at King’s College London. Prior to moving to London in 2012 to join King’s, he lived and worked in Moscow for 13 years, most recently as director of the Centre for the Study of New Media & Society at the New Economic School, and as deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. He holds a PhD in political sociology from the London School of Economics & Political Science. His most recent book, co-authored with Graeme Robertson, is Putin v the People: The Perilous Politics of a Divided Russia, published in 2019 by Yale University Press. His previous book, Moscow in Movement: Power & Opposition in Putin’s Russia, was published in 2014 by Stanford University Press. Sam’s academic work has been published in leading disciplinary and area studies journals, including Comparative Political Studies, Perspectives on Politics, The Journal of Democracy, Post-Soviet Affairs and Problems of Post-Communism. He regularly contributes opinion and analysis pieces to general interest publications, such as The Washington Post, The Moscow Times, Foreign Policy, The New Statesman and others, and is a frequent commentator in British, American, Russian and European broadcast and print media.

Paul Massaro is the senior policy advisor for counter-corruption and sanctions. Paul’s work has advanced the recognition of corruption as a national security threat. He has been described in the media as “one of America’s foremost corruption experts” and an “endless source of democratic ingenuity.” He has worked on over 13 pieces of counter-corruption legislation and facilitated the founding of the Congressional Caucus against Foreign Corruption and Kleptocracy and the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance against Kleptocracy. Paul also covers German-speaking Europe and East Asia. His work on the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act, a landmark law redefining doping as fraud and making it illegal in international competitions anywhere in the world, has for the first time provided justice to clean athletes and held to account the authoritarian actors who use sport as a tool of foreign policy. The Associated Press described the unanimous passage of the act as “a remarkable achievement considering the polarization in U.S. politics.” His work on the Transnational Repression Accountability and Prevention (TRAP) Act was similarly groundbreaking, serving as the first-ever U.S. law to respond to abuse of INTERPOL by authoritarian regimes. Paul is regularly quoted and published by major media outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, POLITICO, and Foreign Policy, and he speaks frequently on panels, podcasts, and broadcasts about corruption, sanctions, and European security policy. His work is featured in Casey Michel’s book American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History. He co-hosts the award-winning Making a Killing podcast, which explores how corruption is reshaping global politics. He is a fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Kleptocracy Initiative, and a member of the Royal United Services Institute’s Transatlantic Response to Illicit Finance Taskforce. Paul is an alumnus of the National Endowment for Democracy Penn Kemble Fellowship and the Robertson Foundation for Government Fellowship. He speaks fluent German.

Tymofiy Mylovanov is a President of Kyiv School of Economics. He graduated from Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (Management) in 1997 and from Kyiv-Mohyla Academy majoring in Economic Theory in 1999. In 2004 he got his PhD in Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA). During his professional career, he has been teaching for a long time at the European and American universities, including Rheinische Friedrich–Wilhelms–Universität Bonn, University of Pennsylvania and University of Pittsburgh. Tymofiy’s research interests cover such areas as theory of games and contracts, institutional design. His articles on these topics have been published in the leading international academic magazines, including Econometrica, American Economic Review, the Review of Economic Studies. During the Revolution of Dignity, jointly with other leading economists of Ukraine and the world, he founded the VoxUkraine platform aimed to increase the level of economic discussion in Ukraine. On July 7, 2016 the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine elected Tymofiy Mylovanov to the Board of the National Bank of Ukraine, and since October 2016 and until August 2019 he has been holding the position of Deputy Chairman of the Board. From August 2019 to March 2020, Tymofiy Milovanov held the post of Minister of Economic Development, Trade and Agriculture of Ukraine. On April 6th, Tymofiy Milovanov returned to work at the Kyiv School of Economics as President. In 2014 and 2015 (the rating was not issued anymore) Forbes Ukraine included Tymofiy Mylovanov in the ranking of the best Ukrainian economists. Thanks to extensive economic knowledge, belonging to the international academic community and familiarity with the situation in Ukraine Tymofiy Mylovanov makes a significant contribution to the development of KSE.