Vladimir Putin seeks re-election on March 18 and there isn’t much doubt about the outcome. The question now is what he’ll do in his fourth term as Russian president.

Putin has put Russia at the centre of world attention. Thanks to his intervention in Syria, his invasion of Ukraine, and his hacking of the US election, he is at the eye of a raging storm of controversy that has inspired millions of words of often fevered, and occasionally deranged commentary. The Russian constitution requires that he stands down after this term: will he be a lame duck? Or can the great tactician find a way to stay in control?

The Frontline Club has gathered three of the coolest observers of the Russian political scene to dissect Putin’s past and future, and to ask what will happen now for the world’s largest country.

Chair

Oliver Bullough, host of the Frontline Club’s popular Kleptoscope series and himself a former Moscow correspondent.

Speakers

Ellen Barry reported from Moscow for the New York Times between 2008 and 2013, the last two years as bureau chief, winning a Pulitzer Prize. She is now an International Correspondent at the paper’s London bureau.

Arkady Ostrovsky is Russia and Eastern Europe editor at The Economist, which he joined in 2007 as Moscow bureau chief after a decade as a Moscow correspondent at the Financial Times. His book The Invention of Russia won the 2016 Orwell Prize.

Shaun Walker is the outgoing Moscow correspondent for the Guardian, having previously reported for The Independent from Russia. He has distilled his experiences into his newly-published The Long Hangover, which analyses how Putin has exploited the past to cement his hold on Russia’s future.

Copies of The Long Hangover will be for sale at the event.

How does the idea of Eurasianism influence modern Russia? We will be joined by a panel, including Charles Clover author of Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism, to explore this theory of Russian national identity based on ethnicity and geography.

From the annexation of Crimea, to Russia’s intervention in Syria and the rise of anti-Western paranoia and imperialist rhetoric, we will examine the history of Eurasianism, how it factors into the thinking of the Kremlin and its impact on Russian society.

Chaired by foreign correspondent for BBC Newsnight, Gabriel Gatehouse.

The panel:

Charles Clover, is an American journalist, currently the Financial Times‘s China correspondent and former Moscow bureau chief. He is author of Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism.

Rodric Braithwaite is a former British diplomat and author. From 1988 to 1992 he served as British ambassador in Moscow. He is the author of Across the Moscow River: The World Turned Upside Down, Moscow 1941: A City and Its People at War and Afgantsy.

Andrei Sidelnikov, human rights activist and leader of Speak Up! – an international campaign group.

Mary Dejevsky is a writer and broadcaster. She is a former foreign correspondent in Moscow, Paris and Washington, and a special correspondent in China and many parts of Europe. She is a member of the Valdai Group, invited since 2004 to meet Russian leaders each autumn.