Wilfried Jilge, historian of Eastern Europe, is an Associate Fellow at the DGAP’s Robert Bosch Center for Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia where his areas of specialization are contemporary history and domestic and foreign politics in Ukraine and in Russia. He is member of the Strategy Group “Key States” within the project “Strategies for the European Neighbourhood” of the Bertelsmann Foundation where he analyses, for example, Russian policies in the EU’s neighbourhood (see e.g. the last policy paper “Geopolitical Ambitions in the Black Sea and Caspian Region” of the Strategy Group which has been recently published (in German)).He also serves on the board of Kiewer Gespräche (Kyiv Dialogue), a German-Ukrainian civil society forum since its foundation in 2005.

Additional areas of interest of Jilge’s research and publications include German and European relations with Ukraine within the context of EU integration and the EU’s neighbourhood policy; domestic and foreign-policy implications of the Ukraine-Russia crisis; and new currents in post-Soviet Russia of nationalism, Neo-Slavophilism, geopolitical identity, identity-based politics as well as Russia’s policies of influence in the near abroad  and neighbourhoods of European Union. Further he analyses history of the “völkisch” movement in Weimar Germany and Austria and especially the Sudeten German nationalist movement including its legacy in Germany after 1945.

Wilfried Jilge, who studied Russian language and culture at the University of Simferopol (Crimea/Ukraine), has spent considerable time in Kyiv and 2013–14 in Moscow where he conducted research on topics mentioned above. He advices members of German Bundestag and representatives of German Federal government as well as members of the European Union on questions related to Ukraine and Russia.