John Lough is an experienced communications and public affairs consultant with specialist knowledge of Eastern Europe. Before joining Highgate, he ran his own consultancy business for five years advising clients on political and investment risk in Russia, Ukraine and other countries of the former Soviet Union. From 2008 to 2016, he ran the Russia/CIS practice of BGR Gabara, a public affairs and strategic consulting firm. From 2003 to 2008, he was an international affairs adviser at TNK-BP, Russia’s third largest oil company at the time.

He has specialised in running campaigns to protect the rights of foreign investors in Russia, Ukraine and Central Asia and has expertise in countering ‘black PR’ techniques used to damage the reputations of corporations and individuals.

He spent six years with NATO managing information programmes aimed at Central and Eastern Europe, including a posting to Moscow where he set up NATO’s Information Office in Russia. He was the first Alliance official to be permanently based in Russia (1995-1998).  During this time, he developed media and public affairs programmes designed to contribute to better understanding of NATO and its policies in Russian society and was NATO’s spokesman in Russia.

Before joining NATO, he was a senior lecturer at the Soviet Studies (later Conflict Studies) Research Centre in the UK, writing on a wide range of defence, security and foreign policy issues related to the former Soviet Union. He is an Associate Fellow of the Russia & Eurasia Programme at Chatham House (since 2009) and has written several research reports for the Institute on Russian and Ukrainian affairs.

He studied German and Russian literature at Cambridge University.  He is the author of ‘Germany’s Russia Problem’ (Manchester University Press 2021)