Ridvan Bari Urcosta

Mr. Urcosta joins Geopolitical Futures as an analyst with wide experience in the Black Sea region, Russia and the Middle East, Ukraine and Crimea as a geopolitical region and Eastern Europe. He is a PhD Candidate at the Centre for Strategic Studies, University of Warsaw and he also teaches an independent ERASMUS course: “Russia and the Middle East: Geopolitics and Diplomacy.” He was born in Abkhazia, Georgia where he lived until the onset of the Civil War. In the early 1990’s he moved to Crimea where he lived until its annexation by Russia. At the moment of annexation he worked in the Sevastopol State Administration. Right after annexation he worked as a Human Rights Officer in Odessa, Ukraine in the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission. Mr. Urcosta graduated from the Estonian Diplomatic Academy in 2015 and completed The Indigenous Fellowship Programme (IFP) in 2017, a comprehensive human rights training program, that was established by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva. In 2018 he gave a speech at the UN Human Rights Council about the human rights situation in annexed by Russian Federation Crimea. Previously Mr. Urcosta has provided insights to different analytical centers including the European Council on Foreign Relations, Jamestown Foundation, War Room (U.S. War College) The Proceedings (U.S. Naval Institute), Jerusalem Post and others. He previously worked as an assistant to the Head of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, a single supreme plenipotentiary representative and executive body of the Crimean Tatar people. He speaks Polish, Russian, English, Ukrainian, Crimean Tatar and Turkish. Moreover, Ridvan works as Senior analyst at the Polish think tank "Strategy&Future" with Jacek Bartosiak (Warsaw, Poland).

Latest From Author

The Next Phase in the Ukraine War

Russia’s campaign to take over the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka represents a new phase in a conflict that has effectively reached a stalemate. Winning control over Avdiivka would be a major breakthrough for Moscow in the Donbas region because it would it an opportunity to maneuver more easily across the eastern front. It would […]

The Inevitable Battle for Kherson

In September, Russia was caught off guard when Ukraine launched a counteroffensive in Kharkiv region in the northeast instead of Kherson region in the south. Two months later, indications...

Russia’s Mobilization May Be a Game-Changer

At no small cost, the Russian military managed to stop the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region. Kyiv’s rapid success sent Moscow searching for an answer. Officially, it...

Russia’s Buffer Zone May Have to Wait

As the military adage goes, no plan survives contact with the enemy. No one is more cognizant of this fact right now than Russia, which has faced multiple setbacks...

Russia’s Protracted War in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine is raging with no end in sight. Neither Russia nor Ukraine is ready to sit at the negotiation table. Both claim that their goals are...

A New Phase in the Ukraine War

Wars tend to unfold in phases, though it’s never clear how many phases there will be when the war breaks out, and less clear still where one phase ends...

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