Timothy Ash is senior sovereign strategist at Bluebay Asset Management in London. He has held this position since 2017 after a 25 year career working as a economist in the City, heading EM and CEEMEA research teams at RBS, Bear Stearns, Nomura, ICBC Standard Bank, et al. Prior to that he worked as an economist at the EIU, and worked as a development consultant in Russia and the former Soviet Union, living in Ukraine for a year in the mid 1990s as well as Russia, et al. He has covered Ukraine for 34 years, first visiting in 1988, and Russia in 1987. He views Russia through a Soviet studies prism which marked him out as one of the few analysts to predict this current crisis, arguing as early as 2015 that a defining conflict between Ukraine and Russia was coming. Last year he was placing a 90% probability on war between Ukraine and Russia this winter.