Dr. Vladimir A. Orlov is the founder and President of the Centre russe d'etudes politiques - Genève, President of the PIR Center - Center for Policy Studies (Russia), and Editor-in-Chief of the Security Index journal.

Dr. Orlov is a leading expert on international security and foreign policy of the Russian Federation. He has particularly focused his research on contemporary international security challenges, such as the proliferation of nuclear weapons and WMD terrorism. His recent publications and policy memos include:

• An evaluation of prospective Russian policies in the area of WMD nonproliferation;
• Recommendations for Russia vis-a-vis Iran's nuclear program;
• The prospects for a U.S.-Russian dialogue on key international security issues.

He actively took part in the analysis of the top issues on the agenda and development of recommendations on key items of Russia's G8 presidency in 2006. He was also a participant in the G8 summit in St.-Petersburg. The international conference “G8 Global Security Agenda: Challenges & Interests. Towards the St.-Petersburg Summit”, which took place in Moscow in April 2006, was organized by PIR Center in the context of Russia's G8 presidency.

Dr. Orlov's current areas of research include:

• Future global energy systems;
• Examining the nature of and interconnections between various global non-state actors (in particular, international terrorist networks and transnational organized crime);
• Security challenges in Central Asia/Caspian.

Vladimir A. Orlov was born in 1968 in Moscow, Russia. After graduating from the Russian Foreign Ministry's Moscow State Institute of International Affairs (MGIMO), where he specialized in international journalism and Latin American studies, Dr. Orlov served as an intern at the Consulate of the USSR in Havana, Cuba, then began a career as a journalist at the offices of the Novosti Press Agency (now known as RIA Novosti), rising through the ranks from columnist to political commentator, to section head, to Vice President and member of the Board of Directors of Moskovskiye Novosti (Moscow News) weekly and company.

In April 1994 Dr. Orlov established the PIR Center, which he heads to this day. In 1994 Dr. Orlov also launched the first Russian journal on nonproliferation issues, Yaderny Kontrol, and served as its Editor-in-Chief. After publishing 80 issues of Yaderny Kontrol, Dr. Orlov decided to use it as a platform for the launch, in 2007, of a new Russian journal on international security issues published in both English and Russian - Security Index.

In 1994 and again in 1999-2002 Dr. Orlov, while continuing his work in Moscow, was a Visiting Scholar and Senior Research Associate at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California. In 2001-2002 the U.N. Secretary-General appointed Dr. Orlov as a U.N. consultant on disarmament and nonproliferation education. As a result of the work done by the U.N. consultants, the Secretary-General issued a report that formed the basis for a U.N. General Assembly Resolution (2002). In 2004 the PIR Center Director became a professor at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, where he served as Co-Director of the GCSP European Training Course in Security Policy between 2005 and 2007.

Dr. Orlov participates in the work of several international centers in the sphere of international security. He is a member of the Russian Pugwash Committee at the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS); the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS); the Monterey Nonproliferation Strategy Group; and of the Board of Trustees of the OSCE Academy in Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan). Dr. Orlov is a member of the Public Board at the Ministry of Defence of Russian Federation. He is the Chairman of the Trialogue Club International.

A regular contributor to Security Index (formerly Yaderny Kontrol), of which he is Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Orlov also publishes his views in Russian and foreign periodicals such as the journals Russia in Global Affairs, and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and the newspapers Moscow Times and Vedomosti. He is a member of Washington Quarterly Editorial Board. He has authored (co-authored) and edited more than a dozen books on international security issues, published both in Russia and abroad. Among his most recent works is Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Guidebook (in Russian and English versions, 2005-06); The G-8 Strelna Summit and Russia's National Power (The Washington Quarterly, 2006); Between Bush and Busher (in Russian version, Russia in Global Affairs, 2005); monograph Preventing Nuclear Meltdown: Managing Decentralization of Russia's Nuclear Complex (Ashgate, 2004), and the chapter “Global Partnership – What's next?” (SIPRI Yearbook 2003).

Dr. Orlov was the Executive Editor and a co-author of the two-volume Russian-language textbook "Nuclear Nonproliferation". The second edition of this textbook came out in 2002 and is used by undergraduate and graduate students throughout Russia and several other countries.

Dr. Orlov continues to teach on a regular basis, giving lectures on Russian foreign policy and WMD nonproliferation. In the past few years he has given lecture courses from Moscow (at the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute and at the State University – Higher School of Economics) to Vladivostok, from Geneva to Bishkek, from Tehran to Havana, from Monterey to Baku, and from Tomsk to Belgrade. His recent audiences have included senior officers of the Iranian Armed Forces, senior Iraqi Foreign Ministry and Interior Ministry officials, heads of customs and border guard services in the Balkan states, senior officers from the Swiss Armed Forces, Armenian diplomats, Albanian Defense Ministry directors, Macedonian Defense Ministry representatives, and leading experts from enterprises in the closed city of Seversk (Tomsk region), among others.

Dr. Orlov speaks English and Spanish. His hobbies include Russian classical literature, hiking in the mountains, and bicycle touring in the tropics. His son, Danila, is eleven years old.