Russian Roulette

In this episode of Russian Roulette, Olya and Jeff offer their take on a busy 2018 in Russia and Eurasia: the Mueller investigation, Vladimir Putin 4.0, Skripal, the World Cup, Trump and Putin’s Helsinki encounter, a new government in Armenia, the Sea of Azov crisis. It's all here, and much, much more.   2018 brought some good news and some bad news. In the latter category, we are sad to report th...

In this episode of Russian Roulette, Jeff sits down with Melinda Haring, Editor of the UkraineAlert blog at the Atlantic Council and a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. They discuss the upcoming presidential elections in Ukraine: the candidates, the issues, how it’s likely to play out, and what it all means for Ukraine and for the West. You can view Melinda’s bio, here, https://www....

In this episode, Jeff sits down with Sarah Cameron, associate professor of history at the University of Maryland and author of the recent book The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan (Cornell University Press, 2018), which examines an important though oft-overlooked episode in Soviet collectivization, the Kazakh famine of 1930-33. They discuss the causes and conseq...

In this episode, Jeff sits down with Philip Stewart, Director of the Program in Dialogue in Organizations at the International Institute for Sustained Dialogue, and a Senior Associate at the Kettering Foundation. Phil directs a bipartisan dialogue on U.S. policy towards Russia—a Track 2 for Republicans and Democrats designed to formulate a sustainable U.S. policy towards Russia. They discuss the s...

On this election day 2018, Jeff sits down with Elizabeth Rosenberg, Senior Fellow and Director of the Energy, Economics, and Security Program at the Center for New American Security (CNAS) for a sanctions-themed episode of Russian Roulette. They discuss the strategy and evolution of the Russia sanctions program, what effects sanctions have had on the economy and politics of Russia, the risks to th...

In this episode of Russian Roulette, Jeff sits down with Marlene Laruelle, a research professor at the Elliot School of International Affairs at George Washington University, associate director of the Institute for Europe, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, and co-director of PONARS (Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia). Not least, Marlene is editor of the forthcoming collect...

In this episode, Olya and Jeff sit down with Sam Charap, a senior political scientist at RAND Corp and coauthor of the recent RAND report “Rethinking the Regional Order for Post-Soviet Europe and Eurasia,” which explores solutions to the dilemma of mutually exclusive Russian and Western integration paths for six “in between” countries: Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. W...

In this episode of Russian Roulette, Jeff sits down with Marina Litvinenko, an activist, campaigner, and the widow of Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian dissident poisoned in London by agents of the Russian government in 2006. They discuss Marina’s campaign to raise awareness about the Russian government’s illicit activity abroad, continuities between her husband’s case and the recent Skripal poiso...

In this episode, Olya and Jeff sit down with Evgeniya Chirikova, a Russian environmental activist who got her start organizing opposition to a planned highway project that would destroy swathes of the federally-protected Khimki forest near Moscow. Our discussion of her efforts to save Khimki forest spills into a broader one about grassroots activism in Russia, its lessons, and its prospects. You c...

In this episode, Olga and Jeff sit down with Brian Taylor to talk about his new book, The Code of Putinism. Brian is a professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and his book provides a framework for thinking about Russian domestic and foreign policy. This podcast is a companion to the book launch CSIS hosted for The Code of Putini...

In this episode, Olya and Jeff sit down with Bill Courtney for a complete tour d’Eurasie. Bill is an adjunct senior fellow at the RAND Corporation and a former career foreign service officer. He served as ambassador to Georgia, Kazakhstan, and the U.S.-Soviet Bilateral Consultative Commission, and covered Russia and Eurasia on the NSC. We discuss the Russian economy, from taxi drivers and pension...

In this episode, Jeff sits down with Seth G. Jones, director of the Transnational Threats Project and a senior adviser to the International Security Program at CSIS, to discuss Seth’s forthcoming book, A Covert Action: Reagan, the CIA, and the Cold War Struggle in Poland, and the legacy of Cold War political warfare. You can view Seth’s bio and recent publications, here: https://www.csis.org/peopl...

Jeff and Jeff take center stage in our sixty-first episode of Russian Roulette. Jeff Mankoff sits down with Jeff Rathke, senior fellow and deputy director of the Europe Program at CSIS to discuss major takeaways from the most recent NATO summit, as well as the upcoming (at the time of recording) Trump-Putin bilateral meeting. Then, Jeff Mankoff tackles new mailbag questions, with some help from Re...

In this episode of Russian Roulette, we sit down with Andrey Baklitskiy. Andrey is a consultant with the PIR Center in Moscow who writes and speaks on arms control and nonproliferation issues. We discuss Russian approaches to nonproliferation, Iran and North Korea, the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and the future of arms control. You can read Andrey’s bio and some of his re...

In this episode of Russian Roulette, Jeff sits down with Aaron Schwartzbaum, the founder and former editor-in-chief of BMB Russia (formerly the Bear Market Brief), a daily news brief and blog covering Russia’s economy, politics, business climate, and political risk environment. They discuss the Russian economy (myths, facts, and mysteries, as well as Russia’s economic outlook), Aaron’s experience...

In this episode of Russian Roulette, Olya sits down with Anton Lavrov, a visiting fellow with the Russia and Eurasia Program at CSIS and an independent defense analyst affiliated with the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST). Anton is a leading specialist on Russia’s 2008 war in Georgia, and a widely-cited expert on Russian military capabilities and Russian operat...

In this episode of Russian Roulette, Olya sits down with Leonid Nersisyan, Military Analyst at the REGNUM Information Agency and Editor in Chief of the Moscow-based New Defense Order Strategy magazine. They discuss the state of military analysis in Russia, including Leonid’s experience running a military affairs magazine; the Russian military-industrial complex and how defense contracts work in Ru...

In this episode of Russian Roulette, Olya and Jeff answer the mail! (yes, it has been too long without a mailbag). Then, Olya sits down with Michael Kimmage, a professor of history at Catholic University who from 2014-2016 held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio on the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State. They discuss Russian literature: the essential works (including those less known...

In the spirit of history, Russian literature, and other things the CSIS Russia team holds dear, we bring you a Russian Roulette episode that is both deeply gloomy and highly entertaining. Olya and Jeff sit down with Matthew Rojansky, director of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, to discuss the state of U.S.-Russia relations, historical cycles in the rela...

In a historically-minded episode of Russian Roulette, Olya and Jeff sit with William Taubman. Dr. Taubman is the Bertrand Snell Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Amherst College and the author of several books, including a biography of Nikita Khrushchev that won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2004, and, most recently, a biography of Mikhail Gorbachev.   Of course, the three discuss G...

In this episode of Russian Roulette, Olya and Jeff sit down with Vitali Shkliarov. Vitali is a Senior Adviser for Ksenia Sobchak’s presidential campaign. Previously, he worked for the Bernie Sanders campaign and for Obama for America. In 2016, alongside Dmitry Gudkov and Max Katz, he helped organize a campaign to field over 1,000 independent candidates in Moscow municipal elections. Olya, Jeff, an...

In a wide-ranging episode of Russian Roulette, Olya and Jeff sit down with Max Trudolyubov, a Senior Fellow at the Kennan Institute and writer for The Russia File blog, as well as an editor at Vedomosti, the independent Russian daily. They discuss Max’s efforts to make Russian commentators accessible to an English-language audience; Stalinism and the official view of Stalin today; religion and the...