Aglaya Snetkov

University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), Faculty Member

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My primary research interests revolve around Russian foreign and security policies, critical IR and security studies, global and regional governance, international security.

Prior to joining UCL in 2018, I was a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Security Studies, ETH Zurich (2010-2018).

I hold a PhD from University Birmingham (2010) - and my thesis was on Russia's security policy under Putin from a critical perspective

I am also one of the editors of the Russian Analytical Digest (RAD), a bi-weekly analytical publication covering political, foreign policy, economic and social developments in Russia.

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Ukraine: why China is not yet bailing out Russia

The conversation, 2022

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RESEARCH NOTE ‘The Loud Dissenter and its Cautious Partner ’ – Russia, China, global governance and

The global issue of humanitarian intervention has become more pro-nounced and complicated in rece... more The global issue of humanitarian intervention has become more pro-nounced and complicated in recent years due to increasingly diverging views on addressing security crises between the West on one side and Russia and China on the other. Despite their support for the principles of ‘Responsibility to Protect ’ (R2P), both Russia and China are wary of Western intervention in internal conflicts after the Cold War and have become increasingly critical of Western-led armed intervention in hu-manitarian conflicts. Unease in Beijing and Moscow over the multilateral intervention in the 2011 Libyan conflict and their ongoing opposition to Western policies in the Syrian Civil War since 2011 would seem to point to ever more coincidence in their negative views of American and Western intervention policies. A conventional wisdom has thus emerged that there is something akin to a Sino–Russian ‘bloc’, with near-identical pol-icies of discouraging armed intervention within state borders under the aeg...

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Cores, continents and regions of equivalence? The multidimensionality of Eurasian meta-geography in Russian state discourse 1

Introducing UNSCdeb 8 ( beta . A database for corpus-driven research on the United Nations Security Council

UNSCdeb8 (pronounced UNSC debate) was developed within the project "Which region? The politi... more UNSCdeb8 (pronounced UNSC debate) was developed within the project "Which region? The politics of the UN Security Council P5 in inter-national security crises,” jointly run by the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zürich, the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Geneva and the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). The project is co-funded by the Swiss National Science Founda-tion (SNF, Project Number: 162925) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, Project Number:

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Russia’s North Caucasus: An arc of insecurity

Although Chechnya no longer makes international headlines, instability persists and has actually ... more Although Chechnya no longer makes international headlines, instability persists and has actually spread within the wider North Caucasus region. Degrading socioeconomic conditions, an unstable political situation, and increasing religious tension have made the North Caucasus susceptible to Islamist insurgency and terrorist activity. The modernisation strategy for the North Caucasus launched by Moscow in 2008 has failed to reverse the situation so far. Turning into an arc of insecurity, the region poses a growing challenge to stability within Russia and beyond.

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From Crisis to Crisis: Russia’s Security Policy Under Putin

This article considers Russia’s more assertive foreign policy stance during the Ukraine crisis an... more This article considers Russia’s more assertive foreign policy stance during the Ukraine crisis and now in terms of conducting airstrikes in Syria in support of the Assad regime. It suggests that these foreign policy-choices should be interpreted in light of questions of domestic security and how these foreign actions relate to the Putin regime’s wider political project for Russia. In this way, the regime’s previous concern about the taboo on the use of force abroad has gradually been eroded in conjunction with its shift to articulating a more patriotic and anti-Western political project following the popular protests against the regime in 2011/12. R security strategy is once again a hot topic for the international community and foreign policy analysts. This is mostly due to the Ukraine crisis and, most recently, Russia’s military operations in Syria in support of the Assad regime. The reaction of analysts and observers to Russia’s stance on Syria and Ukraine highlights the need to g...

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Cooperating and competing: Relations between multilateral organizations in international security

RAD 250: Putin

Russia and the narrative of BRIC

Introducing UNSCdeb 8 ( beta )

(pronounced UNSC debate) was developed within the project "Which region? The politics of the UN S... more (pronounced UNSC debate) was developed within the project "Which region? The politics of the UN Security Council P5 in international security crises," jointly run by the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zürich, the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Geneva and the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). The project is co-funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF, Project Number: 162925) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, Project Number: 28295967). Fred Sündermann wrote the algorithms for compiling the database and this research project would not have been possible without him. We also thank David Schulze, Ilja Sperling as well as the participants of the RUN-2018 workshop in Geneva for their valuable support and feedback. This working paper is archived in Zenodo (

format_quoteThe statements of the five P5 nations in UNSCdeb8 serve as critical subcorpora for analyzing international relations and discourse trends.format_quote

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Countering Violent Extremism

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Common knowledge? Business intellectuals, BRIC and the production of knowledge across global finance and international relations

Journal of International Relations and Development

This article engages with the debate about how we come to know IR the way that we do. It seeks to... more This article engages with the debate about how we come to know IR the way that we do. It seeks to contribute to this research agenda in two, related, ways: Firstly, by highlighting the influence that a previously neglected circuit of practice has on the co-constituted knowledge relationship between Global Finance and IR: the business intellectuals of the Cultural Circuit of Capital (CCC). Secondly, it argues that the Science and Technology Studies' concept of boundary objects is invaluable in accounting for both how IR's "constitutive" theorising is influenced by other circuits of practice and the co-constituted nature of "the international" as an object of investigation. To exemplify both arguments, and how they relate to one another, the article traces the co-constituted operation of the concept of the "BRIC". Following the global financial crisis in 2007/8, the CCC popularized the concept of "BRIC", which then came to operate as a boundary object between IR and Global Finance and in the process impacted on how IR knows "rising powers" and "global governance". Thus, the functionality of BRIC as a boundary object served to provide the business intellectuals of the CCC with constitutive influence on how IR knows its object of study.

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Inter-organizational Relations in International Security

Theories, methods and practices – a longitudinal spatial analysis of the (de)securitization of the insurgency threat in Russia

Security Dialogue, 2017

How do securitizing actors go about desecuritizing policy issues that have been securitized acros... more How do securitizing actors go about desecuritizing policy issues that have been securitized across multiple spatially bounded referent objects? Do such desecuritizations develop as a single or manifold process and with what political effect? And critically, how do we methodologically approach the study of such processes? These are pertinent questions that have been left underexamined in the (de)securitization literature. In seeking to fill this gap, this article makes two main points. First, it calls for a greater focus on the study of (de)securitizations that are constructed according to multiple spatially bounded referent objects, and on how these diverging strands of discourse and practice shape the overarching process. Second, it argues for a greater use of longitudinal methods of analysis as a better way to capture the evolutionary dynamics of desecuritization processes, which (re)constitute security policies and agendas. To illustrate these claims, the article considers the em...

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Russia’s Security Policy under Putin

Russia’s Security Policy under Putin, 2014

Foreign Fighters: An Overview of Responses in Eleven Countries

Center for Security Studies Study, Mar 1, 2014

Over the past years the ever-growing number of foreign fighters participating in the Syrian civil... more Over the past years the ever-growing number of foreign fighters participating in the Syrian civil war has not only attracted a big media interest but it has also become a large concern for policy makers worldwide. The presence of foreign fighters in Syria is considered particularly troublesome given the possibility that some of those who come back from the conflict might engage in acts of politically motivated violence in their countries of origin or in third countries. This study provides an overview of responses to the foreign fighter phenomenon in eleven selected countries and it assesses strategies and legal mechanisms available for policymakers to address the potential threat posed by Syria returnees.

format_quoteUp to 11,000 foreign fighters are currently in Syria, with 2,000 from Western Europe, raising significant security concerns.format_quote

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The Regional Dimensions to Security

The Regional Dimensions to Security, 2013

Theories, methods and 'practices of (de)securitization': The Russia-Chechnya case

Security Dialogue, 2017

How do securitising actors, in this case governments, go about de-securitising policy issues that... more How do securitising actors, in this case governments, go about de-securitising policy issues that have been securitised across multiple referent objects? Do such de-securitisations develop as a single or manifold process and with what political effect? These are pertinent questions that have been left under-examined in the (de)securitisation literature. In seeking to fill this gap, the aims of this article are twofold. Firstly, it calls for a greater focus on what happens in such cases, whereby the de-securitization process encompasses the multiple referent objects initially securitized. Secondly, it considers the case of Russia's policy of normalization towards Chechnya since 2000, as an exemplary case-study to illustrate the politics at play in the nature and practice of de-securitizations, especially if and how this plays out across multiple referent objects. This article argues for a more process-centered and longitudinal approach to the study of the security politics of (de)securitisations, especially as actors go beyond the singular-act of a securitizing move and towards the much broader consideration of managing and counteracting a particular security threat.

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Russia’s Foreign Policy—Current Trajectory and Future Prospects

A central theme in debates about Russia’s foreign and security policy in 2017 has been the role i... more A central theme in debates about Russia’s foreign and security policy in 2017 has been the role it has played within ongoing international crises, with analysts seeking to discern whether Russia’s foreign policy is predominantly a product of ad hoc pragmatism and opportunism or a more systematic and long-term antiWestern perspective. As argued in the article the answer is that it is a mixture of both. The Putin regime is on the one hand seeking to continue playing a pivotal role in individual security crises whilst on the other hand endeavouring to sustain its international position and further broader global alliances, often from a position of weakness.

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Gambles that may actually pay off? Russian foreign policy

2016 has definitely been a notable year for Russian foreign policy and one in which many of its g... more 2016 has definitely been a notable year for Russian foreign policy and one in which many of its gambles appear to have paid off. The Putin regime continued to make bold use of force, both conventional as in the case of Syria and Ukraine and non-conventional or non-linear measures as in the case of the cyber-attacks on the US. As well as making active foreign policy choices, it was also a year in which Russia seemed to profit from many other international trends. In particular, the apparent rise of populism in the West, symbolized by Donald Trump’s election to the US presidency in November. Whilst we will have to wait until 2017 to see how these events are translated into policy-making in practice, the Putin regime does seem to be ending this year on a high.

format_quoteRussian military interventions in Syria dramatically shifted the balance in favor of Assad, showcasing improved military effectiveness and overcoming past weaknesses.format_quote

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Aglaya Snetkov

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