For 25 years, Vladimir Putin has consolidated power in Russia, intensifying repression at home while pursuing expansionist ambitions abroad. With Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine now in its fourth year, the EU’s focus remains on countering Russian aggression and supporting Ukraine. But regardless of how the war ends, Russia will not disappear. The EU must look beyond immediate responses and develop a long-term strategy for Russia, including the question: what comes after Putin?

In his book Where is Russia Heading? Scenarios for the Time Afterwards (S. Hirzel Verlag, 2024), Jens Siegert, former long-time Director of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Moscow office, examines how Russia’s political system, civil society and historical context could shape its post-Putin trajectory.

While change under Putin is unlikely, Russia’s future remains uncertain. In conversation with Dr Simon Cosgrove, Siegert will discuss what scenarios could unfold? What do we need to understand about Russia’s political structures and society to prepare for what comes next? How should the EU navigate its strategy, and which actors – inside and outside Russia – should it engage with?

Jens Siegert is a journalist, writer, and expert on Russian domestic and foreign politics and Russian society. Until January 2021 he was the team leader of the EU project “Public Diplomacy. EU and Russia”. He was the director of the Moscow office of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung until 2015, a foundation closely linked to the German Green Party; he set up the office in 1999. Siegert publishes regularly about Russia, especially the Russian-Western relationship, the structure of Russia’s political system and Russian civil society issues. He has published three books about Russia: 111 Reasons to love Russia, (2018), In Principle Russia. An Encounter in Terms (2021) and Where is Russia Heading? Scenarios for the Time After (2024), all in German.

Siegert was born in 1960 in West Germany, and studied political science, sociology and economy in Marburg. From 1988 to 2001 he worked as a freelance journalist for German, Austrian and Swiss media, based in Cologne and Moscow. Jens has lived and worked in Moscow since 1993, and is currently based in Europe.

Dr Simon Cosgrove is chair of the trustees of Rights in Russia and currently editor of the Rights in Russia website. He has many years’ experience working on grantmaking programmes supporting human rights organisations in Russia – first with the European Commission and then with the US-based MacArthur Foundation. He has also worked as a researcher for Amnesty International and served as a member of the board of the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum. Cosgrove is the author of Russian Nationalism and the Politics of Soviet Literature: The Case of Nash Sovremennik 1981–91 (2004). Earlier in his career he trained as a teacher and worked in secondary schools in London and rural Zimbabwe.

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