Mayak Intelligence Ltd is a UK-based boutique research, writing, education and consultancy firm, concentrating on Russia, as well as certain wider thematic issues relating to organised and transnational crime, war, politics and history.

Its principal director is Prof. Mark Galeotti, a veteran observer of Russian security and politics, also currently an honorary professor at UCL and senior associate fellow at RUSI and the Council on Geostrategy, and previously senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague, professor of global affairs at New York University, and adviser at the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office. He is a prolific author and you can read more about him and other researchers associated with us here, as Mayak Intelligence also works with a network of affiliate researchers, analysts and experts in Russia and beyond.

Why ‘Mayak’?

Mayak is the Russian word for ‘lighthouse,’ a source of illumination that one hopes will help others steer away from rocks and shipwreck. It was also the name of a very nice bohemian bar-restaurant in Moscow, once very much a haunt of the cultural intelligentsia, where much inside gossip on the capital’s political, economic and social scenes was shared over a bottle or a shot. Needless to say, Mayak Intelligence Ltd is in no way connected with that other Mayak, which in any case has sadly closed.