Keir Giles

Who Will Defend Europe?

KEIR GILES has spent his career watching, studying and explaining Russia.

Keir is a regular contributor and commentator on Russian affairs for international print and broadcast media, as well as publishing in-depth research in academic and military publications across Europe and in North America. Keir is a Senior Consulting Fellow at the UK's Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), but has also worked with more than a dozen governments and defence forces around the world predicting and analysing the Russian threat. After one of the briefest careers on record with the Royal Air Force and travelling widely in the Soviet Union while gaining his first degree in Russian, Keir Giles co-founded the first company providing Western pilots the opportunity to fly Soviet military aircraft, at sites near Moscow and in Crimea. Later working with the BBC Monitoring Service (BBCM) in the UK and Russia, he continued to specialise in the Russian military, and transferred to the UK Defence Academy to work on Russian strategy and doctrine, information and cyber warfare, and tracking the development of Russia's plans for war.

Keir has authored multiple publications explaining the Russian approach to warfare, including NATO's "Handbook of Russian Information Warfare" (2016), and "Moscow Rules: What Drives Russia to Confront the West" (Brookings, 2019), diving deep into the persistent factors causing relations with Russia to fall into crisis. His book "Russia's War on Everybody" (Bloomsbury, 2022) described the human impact of Russia's campaigns to acquire power and influence around the world, far beyond Ukraine.