Dr Irina Isakova (PhD, ISKRAN, Russian Academy of Sciences) is an Associate Fellow at RUSI and Specialist Adviser on Russia and the FSU to the House of Commons Defence Committee. Previously she was Research Fellow at King's College London; Research Associate at the IISS, London; Head of Section at the Institute of the USA and Canada Studies, Moscow, and served as a foreign policy expert at the Foreign Affairs Committee, RF Federation Council. She was a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institute (Washington, DC).