Watch this talk on YouTube: To follow

Quentin Peel, who we’re delighted to welcome back to our Monthly Meetings for the third time, asks when and how did we get Russia wrong?

Was it over-optimism about Gorbachev’s Perestroika?  A failure to back Yeltsin when he needed the cash?  Or blindness to the ruthless ambition of Vladimir Putin?

Where, now, is the limit to the return of Russian Imperialism, and can we contain it?

Quentin Peel, former Financial Times Bureau Chief in Moscow, tries to unravel this riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma>

He lives with his family in Islington and continues to contribute regular articles to the Financial Times.