Andreas Heinemann-Grüder is a research fellow with the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) and a professor of political science at University of Bonn. His research focuses on politics and conflicts in the post-Soviet space, comparative federalism, the resurgence of authoritarianism, and violent political crises with irregular armed groups. In addition to his professorship, he is a senior fellow and board member at the Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies (CASSIS) of the University of Bonn. Previously, he has taught at the Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, Duke University in North Carolina, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Cologne. He has given policy advice to the German Chancellery, Federal Foreign Ministry, Ministry of Economic Cooperation and the Ministry of Defense, as well as the German Parliament, the European Parliament, OSCE, NATO, and the EU Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe. His recent publications include: Who are the Fighters? Irregular Armed Groups in the Russian-Ukrainian War since 2014, Stuttgart 2022; (with Martin Aust, Angelika Nußberger, Ulrich Schmid). Osteuropa zwischen Mauerfall und Ukrainekrieg: Besichtigung einer Epoche. Berlin 2022; (with Claudia Crawford, Tim B. Peters). (eds.). Lehren aus dem Ukrainekonflikt, Opladen 2022. Dmitry Durnev is an independent journalist in Ukraine who has been working for Open Democracy, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Spektr Press, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. He was the former editor-in-chief of the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets in Donbass. Julia Friedrich is a research fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi). Her research has focused on security dynamics in Russia and Ukraine. She also works on foreign influencing in the context of EU enlargement as well as German and European stabilization policy. Her work on Ukraine has covered Russia’s occupation practices since 2022 and, prior to the full-scale invasion, the impact of the Donbas war on social cohesion in eastern Ukraine and the reintegration of veterans into Ukrainian society. Until February 2022, she was a visiting fellow at the Razumkov Centre in Kyiv, Ukraine. Sergey Savchenko, Lieutenant General of the armed forces of Ukraine, head of the Kyiv based Analytical Center for the study of hybrid threats; between 2014–16 he participated in Ukraine’s Anti-Terrorist Operation against Russian-backed separatist. In 2004–05, he was deputy head of the multi-national division South-Centre in Iraq. Andreas Umland, M.Phil. (Oxford), Dr.Phil. (FU Berlin), Ph.D. (Cambridge), Research Fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs in Stockholm, Senior Expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv, and Associate Professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
