Dr. Stefan Meister
Dr. Meister is the Head of International Order and Democracy Program, DGAP. Dr. Meister was the head of the Robert Bosch Center for Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia at DGAP from 2017 to 2019. He has worked as a senior policy fellow in the Wider Europe Team at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and as a visiting fellow at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington DC. Dr. Meister has written about Russian disinformation and propaganda and covered conflict transformation and institution building in post-Soviet countries. Some of his published work is Geopolitics and Security: A New Strategy for the South Caucasus (KAS/DGAP/GIP, 2018) and Eastern Voices (Center for Transatlantic Relations/DGAP, 2017), both of which he co-authored.
Friday March, 4
Panel VI: The Return of History or the End of the World? The Russian Ultimatum to the West
From the so-called ‘Wild Nineties’ to the present, Western pundits have predicted Russian collapse or decline. In some discourses, Russia has been reduced to the status of a second-rate power or a geopolitical annoyance, based on its demographics, economy, or global relevance. Russian political analysts, on the other hand, have described a decline of the West and a continuing shift toward geopolitical multipolarity, wherein Russia would regain its former status as a global power. The invasion of Ukraine brings these two points of view to a cacophonous crescendo, and it seems that only one of these voices will remain in the subsequent quiet. This concluding panel will discuss this key point of contention in light of the current aggression.
Moderator: Dr. Sandis Šrāders, Fellow, Baltic Defence College