My name is Karl Theus. I am 23 years old and a Swiss citizen. When I was 16 years old I went on an AFS exchange year to the city of Krasnodar in Southern Russia. After I came back, I finished high school and enrolled to HSE Moscow for my bachelor studies in International Relations which I finished in the summer of 2022. During my time in Moscow, I also worked as an assistant to professor S. Vorobev and did an internship at the German Chamber of Commerce in Moscow. Since summer of 2022 I am studying at PSIA Sciences Po. My main focus is on Russia and the Post-Soviet space, but I also focus on the MENA region.