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IFR Futures Lab

Russia 2030 Futures Enhanced

Mentor

Pavel Havlicek is a Research Fellow at the Association for International Affairs (AMO). His research focus is on Central and Eastern Europe, especially Ukraine and Russia, and the Eastern Partnership. He also deals with questions of security, disinformation, and strategic communication as well as democratization and civil society support in the CEE and post-Soviet space.

About the project

The project idea continues and further develops the work on the Russia 2030 Futures scenario-making exercise, which is an initiative that is currently being finished within a limited scope of time by the Association for International Affairs (AMO) in Prague, the German Marshall Fund (GMF) of the US, and the College of Eastern Europe (KEW) in Wroclaw. 

The concept originally emerged out of the need to look at Russia’s future after the war in Ukraine and foresee different ways things might develop inside of Russia in the future. Many of the futures, based on the above-elaborated scenario options, include unexpected events (black swans) or fastened developments of existing trends (grey rhinos).

In terms of methodology, the project is based on the method of strategic foresight and from that stemming scenario-building exercise, originally coming from the private sector and the risk analysis environment. The methodology itself has been widely described in the literature and used on a number of occasions by EU institutions, including the European Commission, and other political institutions, as well as research initiatives and think tanks.

The work of the lab is focused on the elaboration of individual scenarios, determining the plausibility of each of the policy courses, establishing realistic conditions (backsighting) and consequences of those options, and looking for strengths and weaknesses of those.

One of the main goals of the project is thus to let the young people think creatively, give them the opportunity for their professional growth, and join the policy discussion on the topic, which is already today occupying the mind of most relevant stakeholders working on Russia and the post-Soviet space, including Ukraine, Belarus, or the rest of the Eastern Partnership countries, while having profound implications also for the world.

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