Chris Donnelly

Chris Donnelly  link Companies House Company Check OpenCorporates Powerbase (Soldier, spook, deep politician)
File:Chris Donnelly.jpg
Born	10 November 1946 Rochdale, UK
Victim of	permanent war mentality
Nationality	UK
Alma mater	Manchester University
Spouse	Jill Norris
A UK Deep politician who set up the Institute for Statecraft (amongst other groups).

Christopher Nigel Donnelly is a UK deep politician who was a "special adviser" to four NATO secretaries general for 13 years, as well as to UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He also co-founded the Institute for Statecraft (which he directed) and its offshoot Integrity Initiative. Until the Integrity Initiative Leak on 5 November 2018, he was little known outside of deep political circles. A NATO biography from 2003 stated that "His current major interest is in the reform of defence and security establishments in Central and Eastern European countries following the end of the Cold War".

From 1970 to 1993, Chris Donnelly served as a reserve officer in Britain's Territorial Army. As of 2025, he still had no English Wikipedia page.

Mental health

In 2018, 'b' suggested for the Moon of Alabama that "Donnelly seems to be obsessed with the 'Russian threat' and is determined to fight it by all means." Donnelly wrote several of the documents in the Integrity Initiative Leak, which suggest he is suffering from a severe permanent war mentality and sees the world in one-dimensional "for us or against us" terms.

Activities

"Donnelly was at one time adviser to Margaret Thatcher. From 1989-2003, he was a Special Adviser for central and eastern Europe to the secretary general of NATO. In fact, he served four secretaries general, including Lord Robertson."

In 2003, Donnelly founded the Advanced Research and Assessment Group, which Wikipedia reported in 2020 "brought together experts from the military, academia and other fields in "research clusters" dedicated to specific areas of concern, in order to provide policy-makers with focussed analysis of international security issues."

In 2010, Donnelly took part in Security and Defence Learning/2010, with at least one fellow IfS member Jeffrey McCausland. The discussions were chaired by another member of the IfS, politician/spook Harold Elletson. Donnelly was a director of the Active Change Foundation for over 9 years.

Donnelly's claim that "Russia is happy to accept bribery, using organized crime as a tool" was reported by the BBC in Russian in 2014.

Opinions

Skripal Affair

Full article: Skripal Affair

Chris Donnelly told @BBCJLandale at #TMSRussia that the poisoning of Sergei Skripal was an "act of war".

Crimean Bridge

In October 2022, a secret British intelligence plot to intervene in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine was revealed in internal documents and correspondence obtained exclusively by The Grayzone. The April 2022 plan, drawn up at the request of Chris Donnelly, was an elaborate scheme to blow up the Crimean Bridge with the involvement of specially trained Ukrainian soldiers.

Almost six months after the plan was circulated, Kerch Bridge was attacked in an October 8^th suicide bombing apparently overseen by Ukraine’s SBU intelligence services.

The truck bombing of the Kerch Bridge differed operationally from the plot sketched for Chris Donnelly. Yet, Britain’s evident interest in planning such an attack underscores the deep involvement of NATO powers in the Ukraine proxy war.

Exposure

Watch on YouTube

Chris Donnelly recorded a video about his work for the IfS after the leak, claiming the site was hacked by people that were against Ifs their alleged goals.

Donnelly was exposed as a deep state operative in 2018 when internal documents of the Integrity Initiative were published online. These included a PDF of his passport and his CV. In his role as director of The Institute for Statecraft, he stated that: {{#subobject: |Has superobject=Chris Donnelly |Has objectClass=Quotation |Has author=Chris Donnelly|+sep=, |Has text=“It is essential for a PM to recognise that, whatever they might claim, governmental institutions which have failed over the past decade to foresee, identify and deal with emerging crises and maintain national sovereignty, are today totally incapable of providing a solution to the crisis which is now upon the country.” |Is about=Chris Donnelly,|+sep=, |Has wikipediaPage= |Has location=|+sep=, |Has publicationDate=10 May 2018 |Sourced from=Integrity Initiative/Leak |Has sourceDetails=Developing Strategic Thinking and the Means for Implementing National Strategy |Has sourceTitle= |Has sourceName=Integrity Initiative/Leak |Has sourceURL=

}}

“It is essential for a PM to recognise that, whatever they might claim, governmental institutions which have failed over the past decade to foresee, identify and deal with emerging crises and maintain national sovereignty, are today totally incapable of providing a solution to the crisis which is now upon the country.”
Chris Donnelly (10 May 2018) 

Publications

• Heirs of Clausewitz: Change and Continuity in the Soviet War Machine London Alliance Publishers, for the Institute for European Defence & Strategic Studies, 1985 Occasional paper (Institute for European Defence & Strategic Studies), No 16.
• Red Banner Soviet Military System in Peace and War 1988
• Gorbachev's Revolution: Economic Pressures and Defence Realities Coulsdon, Surrey, Jane’s Information Group 1989
• Nations, Alliances and Security: A Collection of Writings Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó 2004
• War in Peacetime and Ambiguous Warfare and the Resurgence of the Russian Military COMEC OCCASIONAL PAPER No 9, November 2017 online edition

References