Professional Affiliation

Senior Foreign Service Officer, US Department of State

Expert Bio

Michael Keays is a career Foreign Service Officer with over 30 years in the US Department of State. Most recently he served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Paramaribo, Suriname, and as Consul General at the US Consulate General in Vladivostok, Russia. Mr. Keays’ other previous diplomatic postings overseas include the US embassies in Tel Aviv, Warsaw, Moscow and Kingston. In Afghanistan, he was the State Department representative on a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Ghazni Province. At the State Department, he was a Senior Ukraine Policy Advisor in the State Department’s Office of Eastern European Affairs and served as an advisor to two US Special Negotiators for Conflicts in the Former Soviet Union, and as the Counterinsurgency & Political-Military Team Leader on the Afghanistan Desk. He joined the State Department’s Foreign Service in 1992, and received language training in Russian, Polish and Pashto.

Expertise

• Asia
• Europe
• Latin America
• Middle East and North Africa
• Russia and Eurasia

Wilson Center Project

Re-Engaging Russia in a Post Russia-Ukraine Conflict World

Project Summary

The project will consider the practical ways to re-engage Russia in a post Russia-Ukraine conflict situation, considering various scenarios and providing practical suggestions for each. It assumes the U.S. will choose to re-engage Russia in some form when re-engagement is deemed appropriate.