Alena Popova (@alenapopova) is a Russian opposition politician and founder of the Ethics and Technology think tank. In 2021, she ran for elections to the State Duma. In October 2022, the Russian Ministry of Justice designated Alena as a “foreign agent”. Alena is currently a Public Policy Fellow at Wilson Center and researching digital authoritarianism and its threat to democracies and human rights, regulation of the use of data and AI, export of digital repression technologies, disinformation campaigns. In 2018, during a protest in Moscow, she was detained using a facial recognition system. Alena filed a lawsuit against the use of a facial recognition system in Moscow. Alena is also a women's rights activist. She is one of the co-authors of the first anti-domestic violence laws in Russia. Before the start of the war in Ukraine and exile, Alena coordinated the work to pass this bill. More than 950,000 people signed her petition for the adoption of this law. Alena prepared several other bills to protect women's rights, including the anti-harassment law.
Ian Garner () is a scholar of Russian culture and war propaganda. His research focuses in particular on the construction of national and individual identity and myth with regards to warfare. He is the author of two books: Stalingrad Lives: Stories of Combat and Survival (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022), and the forthcoming Z Generation: Into the Heart of Russia's Fascist Youth (Oxford UP/Hurst). Dr. Garner is a regular contributor to media channels all over the world, and currently teaches in the department of Political Studies at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.
Jade McGlynn () is a Leverhulme Researcher in the War Studies department at King’s College London. She is the author of Russia’s War (2023, Polity) and Memory Makers (2023, Bloomsbury) and editor of two volumes on memory politics and history in Eastern Europe. She holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford, where she previously worked as a Lecturer in Russian. Jade’s research focuses on national identity, memory, media and popular culture in Russia and Ukraine.
Maksim Kruglov (@YablokoParty) is an MP in the Moscow City Duma, Chairman of the Yabloko faction of the Moscow City Duma, and Deputy Chair of the Moscow branch of the Yabloko party, the social-liberal political party in Russia. Mr Kruglov graduated from the Russian State Social University (RGSU), at the Department of Political Science, and finished the post-graduate course in the Russian State Humanitarian University (RGGU). He is candidate of political science (PhD). He was a member of the Youth Chamber at the Moscow City Duma; from 2009 is an expert at the Yabloko Anti-Corruption Policy Center.
Leon Hartwell (@LeonHartwell) is a Senior Associate at 杏吧论坛 IDEAS and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) in Washington DC. His research interests include conflict resolution, genocide, diplomacy, democracy, the Russia-Ukraine war, and the Western Balkans. Previously, Hartwell was the Senior Advisor of the Central and South-East Europe Programme (CSEEP) and the 2022 Sotirov Fellow at 杏吧论坛 IDEAS, and CEPA’s Acting Director of the Transatlantic Leadership Program. From 2012 to 2013, he was also the Senior Policy Advisor for Political and Development Cooperation at the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Zimbabwe, where his work included government and civil society engagement, political reporting, peace building projects, and supporting human rights defenders. In 2019, Hartwell completed a joint doctoral degree summa cum laude at Leipzig University (Germany) and Stellenbosch University (South Africa). His thesis analyzed the use of mediation in the resolution of armed conflicts. Hartwell has published extensively in professional scholarly outlets and mainstream media ranging from the Negotiation Journal (Harvard-MIT-Tufts) and Oxford University Press to War on The Rocks. He speaks Afrikaans, English, Dutch, and Latvian, which he studied at the U.S. Foreign Service Institute.