THE WAR ABOVE US

Andrius Kubilius is a Lithuanian politician who has held significant roles in both Lithuanian and European governance. He served as the Prime Minister of Lithuania twice, from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2012, and was a long-time member of the Lithuanian Parliament (Seimas). He was also the chairman of the conservative Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats party. Since 2019, he has been a Member of the European Parliament, and currently serves as the European Commissioner for Defence and Space.

General Raimundas Vaikšnoras currently serves as the Chief of Defence of Lithuania. His military career began in 1991, shortly after Lithuania regained its independence, when he joined the Lithuanian Armed Forces as a reconnaissance officer. Over the past three decades, he has held a wide range of leadership positions – from platoon and company commander to Chief of Staff of the Lithuanian Land Forces and Commander of the Mechanized Infantry Brigade “Iron Wolf.” He has also served as Commander of the Lithuanian Land Forces, and later as Assistant Chief of Staff Plans J7 at NATO’s Allied Joint Force Command, Brunssum.

Lieutenant General Andrus Merilo is the current Commander of the Estonian Defence Forces, having assumed the role in July 2024. He has extensive combat experience from deployments to Lebanon, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and previously commanded the Scouts Battalion and the 1st Infantry Brigade.

Major General Kaspars Pudāns is the current Chief of Defence of the Republic of Latvia (Commander of the National Armed Forces), a position he assumed in January 2025. He has over 25 years of service, including experience in NATO’s mission in Afghanistan and duty as Latvia’s military representative to NATO/EU in Brussels.

Rear Admiral Giedrius Premeneckas is a Lithuanian military officer and the current Chief of the Defence Staff of the Lithuanian Armed Forces, a position he assumed in July 2025. A career naval officer, he previously served as the Commander of the Lithuanian Navy and was the first Lithuanian officer to command a NATO naval task group (SNMCMG1).

Dr. Agnia Grigas is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington DC since 2015. Her award-winning books include “The New Geopolitics of Natural Gas” (Harvard University Press, 2017), “The Politics of Energy and Memory” (Routledge, 2013) and “Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire” (Yale University Press, 2016), which was selected as TIME magazine’s Top-10 book.

Petteri Korvala (born 1971) started as Secretary General of the Security Committee on September 1, 2023. His current position focuses on issues related to the comprehensive security of the Finnish society, which he promotes with the Secretariat of the Security Committee he leads.

Vice Admiral Rune Andersen is a Norwegian naval officer and the current Chief of the Norwegian Joint Headquarters (NJHQ), which commands all Norwegian operational military activities at home and abroad. He assumed this role in November 2023. A career Navy officer, he previously served as the Chief of the Royal Norwegian Navy from 2020 to 2023.

Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo is a Canadian freelance security and defense reporter based in Milan, Italy, serving as a Europe Correspondent for Defense News. Her reporting focuses on military procurement, international security, and the aviation sector, with a specialization in drone warfare and counter-drone systems. She also contributes research to the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI).

Lieutenant General (ret.) Tomasz Piotrowski is a retired Polish general who was the Operational Commander of the Armed Forces from 2018 until his resignation in October 2023. A veteran of the Polish Land Forces, he previously served as Deputy Commander of the Polish Military Contingent in Afghanistan.

Dr Thomas Withington is an award-winning analyst and writer specialising in electronic warfare, radar and military communications. He has written widely on these subjects for a range of specialist and general publications. He also works as a consultant and adviser in these areas for several leading government and private sector clients. Furthermore, Dr Withington provides regular commentary on security and defence aspects of electromagnetic spectrum use for major media organisations around the world.

George Barros is the Russia Team & Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) Team Lead on the Russia and Ukraine portfolio at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Mr. Barros’ work with the Russia and Ukraine portfolio focuses on Russian information operations, the Kremlin’s operational art and campaign design in Ukraine and Belarus, and lessons learned for contemporary warfare. His work within the GEOINT Team focuses on innovating ISW’s open-source research methodology with remote-sensing data collection, data visualization, and geospatial analysis. Mr. Barros regularly briefs senior military and political decision-makers.

Sir Lawrence Freedman is Emeritus Professor of War Studies, King’s College London, where he was Professor of War Studies from 1982 to 2014 and Vice-Principal from 2003 to 2013. He was educated at Whitley Bay Grammar School and the universities of Manchester, York and Oxford. He previously held research appointments at the IISS, Nuffield College Oxford and Chatham House. Elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1995, he was appointed Official Historian of the Falklands Campaign in 1997. In June 2009 he was appointed to serve as a member of the official inquiry into Britain’s role in the 2003 Iraq War. His most recent book is Command: the Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine. With his son, Sam, he publishes the substack Comment is Freed.

Capt. Bartłomiej PĄCZEK serves in the Polish Navy since 1994. He graduated the Faculty of Navigation and Naval Weapons of the Polish Naval Academy in 1999, starting his service aboard the hydrographic vessel ORP “Arctowski” of the Hydrographic Support Squadron. His scientific researches led him to the Polish Naval Academy, where Capt. PĄCZEK began his service in 2007, initially as a lecturer and later as professor – assistant. During this period, his scientific activities focused on the role of naval forces in the state’s security system and the theory and practice of naval forces command.

Ryan Evans is the founder of War on the Rocks, a media outlet on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs – and Bedrock Knowledge, an enterprise software company that delivers knowledge at point of need for U.S. military and Fortune 500 customers. He previously worked at various think tanks and as a deployed Defense Department civil servant in Helmand Province, Afghanistan in support of British and Danish forces at the height of the surge.

Major Andrii Yusov is the Press Representative of the Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and a key public voice for Ukrainian military intelligence. He is responsible for disseminating official intelligence updates, reporting on Russian military capabilities, and confirming the results of Ukrainian special operations to domestic and international media. Additionally, he serves as the Deputy Head of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, where he handles sensitive communications regarding POW exchanges.

Colonel Peter Nielsen, from the Danish Army, led the NATO Force Integration Unit in Lithuania from 2021 until mid‑2025. He brought over 40 years of military experience, including tours in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and service at NATO’s strategic headquarters in Brussels. Under his leadership, NFIU Lithuania continued strengthening interoperability, rapid deployment readiness, and multinational cooperation to reinforce regional defense posture.

Stylianos Tzimis is a Senior Analyst at the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats in Helsinki, specializing in maritime hybrid threats. He is an active-duty Captain in the Hellenic Navy with over thirty years of service, both at sea on warships and in senior positions across naval headquarters. From 2021 to 2024, he served as Director of Staff at the Supreme National Defence General Staff in Athens.

Julius von Freytag-Loringhoven is a German political consultant and the Head of the Baltic States Office for the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom (FNF), based in Vilnius, Lithuania. He focuses on building security policy dialogue and promoting liberal values in the region. Before his current role, he was the head of the FNF’s Moscow office for eight years (2012–2020) and later the head of the Jerusalem office. He is also the Deputy Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom.

He covers the range of issues in the maritime domain from strategy to technology and capability development. Nick’s specialist areas of interest are US Navy developments; NATO, European, Russian and Chinese naval capabilities; and maritime developments in the Euro-Atlantic, Middle East, South Asia, and the Asia-Pacific regions. He also has a particular interest and expertise in aircraft carrier and maritime aviation developments. Before joining the Institute, Nick was a BBC journalist for more than 30 years, specialising in covering defence, security and international affairs. His last appointment was as a BBC World Affairs Correspondent. He was also the BBC’s first Pentagon Correspondent.

Dr. Denys Surkov, MD, PhD, is a leading Ukrainian military and emergency medicine specialist known for his work in adapting medical protocols to the realities of large-scale combat operations. He serves as a lecturer at the Department of Disaster Medicine and Military Medicine at Dnipropetrovsk Medical Academy and is the Head of the Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care for Newborns at the Dnipro Regional Clinical Hospital.

Giedrius Krupauskas is a high-ranking Lithuanian intelligence official who currently serves as a Deputy Director of the State Security Department (VSD), Lithuania’s national security agency. He began his career with the VSD in 2010 and has extensive experience in intelligence analysis, previously leading the Analysis Board and serving as an expert at a NATO intelligence unit. He holds a master’s degree in political science from Vilnius University and was appointed to his current five-year term in 2022.

Tony Lawrence is the head of the defence policy and strategy programme at the International Centre for Defence and Security, Tallinn, Estonia. His research focuses on various aspects of defence and deterrence in the Baltic region including the defence policies of the Baltic states and other regional actors, defence cooperation, the role of NATO and the EU, military components of deterrence and defence, and the progress and impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Dr. Aleksander Olech is the Head of International Cooperation at Defence24 Group and Editor-in-Chief of Defence24.com. He lectures at national and international universities, is a NATO associate, analyst, and publicist. Previously, he served as Deputy Director of the Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In recent years, he has closely cooperated with NATO ENSEC COE, NATO StratCom, NATO CCD COE, and NATO COE DAT.

Sandis Šrāders is a Latvian foreign policy and defense expert. He is the Director of Defense Innovation at Riga Technical University and a Senior Researcher at the Latvian Institute of International Affairs. He also served as the Secretary General of the Latvian Transatlantic Organization (LATO) from 2007 to 2014, and coordinated intellectual work for the Latvian Presidency of the EU Council in 2015. His focus areas include Russian and U.S. foreign policy.

Dr. Michael Gjerstad is part of the IISS-Europe and its Defence and Military Analysis research programme as a land warfare analyst, and conducts research on Russian defence industry, force structures, and battlefield adaptations. His work translates this into strategic insights on current and emerging threats for Ukraine, NATO, and European security. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Southern Denmark.

Before joining the IISS, Fabian was a research and development specialist in the defence industry. He previously worked as a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California. Fabian holds a BA in Political Science and Islamic Studies from Freiburg University and a MA in International Relations from Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University and the University of Potsdam.

Maurits is a technical founder and leader with over seven years of experience in defense autonomy and robotics. He is a CEO ofNexus which is a military Command and Control platform that helps operators plan and execute missions with one or multiple UxVs in complex environments. At the core of Nexus is a central hub for mission planning and real-time monitoring, complemented by a smart agent onboard the UxV. Nexus focuses on usability, autonomy and mission success.

Kadi Silde is the Director for European Engagement at Helsing, a defense technology company specializing in AI. Her work focuses on Europe’s Eastern Flank, the EU, and NATO.

Marte Ziolkowski is an Advisor in the Security and Contingency Planning Department at the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association. Her work focuses on international and domestic maritime security and preparedness for Norwegian shipping companies.

Julius Bartaševičius holds the position of Planning Engineer at the J55 Development Planning Board of the Defence Staff of the Lithuanian Armed Forces. His background and expertise are primarily in aeronautical engineering and drone technology, which he applies to his current role in defense planning.

Arūnas Vinčiūnas is currently an official at the European Commission. He holds the position of Acting Head of Unit in the Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space (DEFIS), within the unit focusing on Ukraine Support & Military Mobility (DEFIS.A.2).