Please join the Harriman Institute for a discussion with Ivana Stradner. Moderated by Tanya Domi.

As the war in Ukraine continues, Russia is provoking chaos in the Balkans to distract the West. The Kremlin’s goal is to exacerbate the existing perilous ethnic tensions in the region into violence and thus to undermine NATO and to reassert Russia’s dominance in the region.

Vladimir Putin does not need to roll out tanks and jets in the Balkans, as he is successfully using hybrid warfare to undermine the West. Information warfare plays an important role in Russia’s national security and the Balkans is a theatre for Moscow’s information games.

Dr. Ivana Stradner will explain Russia’s information warfare playbook for the Balkans and how Moscow has been using information as a weapon to undermine the West.

Dr. Ivana Stradner is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and she is a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. She studies Russia’s security strategies and military doctrines to understand how Russia uses information operations for strategic communication. Her work examines both the psychological and technical aspects of Russian information security. Ivana also analyzes Russian influence in international organizations; she is currently focusing on the UN Cybercrime Treaty and UN efforts to regulate information security. Ivana has testified before the European Parliament and has briefed various government officials. Ivana also serves as a special correspondent for KyivPost. Before joining FDD, Ivana worked as a visiting scholar at Harvard University and a lecturer for a variety of universities, including the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, and as a Jeane Kirkpatrick fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Ivana has been published in academic journals and has written for The Washington Post, New York Post, Foreign Affairs, The Hill, Foreign Policy, Politico, The Telegraph, National Review, and more.