This conversation will feature Ayse Zarakol of Cambridge University and Alexander Cooley of Barnard College. It will examine the various concepts that have been used to situate Russia geographically, politically and culturally, with an emphasis on the notion of "Eurasia." It will also relate these concepts to the various geopolitical configurations in and around Russia historically.

This conversation with Swasti Rao, a professor at the Jindal School of International Affairs, looks at the origins of the war in Ukraine from multiple points of view, starting with its European and transatlatnic background and emphasizing the global context for this war, both in its origins and in its consequences.

This conversation, with Alexandra Prokopenko of the Carnegie Endowment, focuses on Prokopenko's recent book, From Sovereigns to Servants: How the War against Ukraine Reshaped Russia's Elite, a study of decision-making at the very top of the Russain government and the patterns of loyalty that enable this decision-making and allow it to be implemented, a history of Russian governance from the 1990s to the present moment.

A conversation with Thomas Wright, of the Brookings Institution, on the origins of the war, following two lines of inquiry, one on the European context for the war and the other on U.S.-Russian relations as a point of origin for the war.

A conversation with Hanna Notte, a Kennan Institute non-resident fellow, focusing on her book, We Shall Outlast Them: Putin's Global Campaign to Defeat the West, a study of Rusian foriegn policy as it extends beyond Europe and the United States and of the global dynamic behind Russia's war against Ukraine.

This conversation with Timothy Frye, a political scientist at Columbia University and a member of the Kennan Institute Advisory Council, and Samuel Greene, a political scientist at King's College London, will address the question of public opinion in Russia - in the wake of the September Duma elections in Russia. It will assess not just the question of what Russian public is, but of how Russian public opinion can be assessed and researched.

A conversation with Sylvie Kauffmann, a distinguished French journalist, looking at European politics in the lead-up to Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, at the relationship of various European countries to Russia before 2022 and at the European origins of Russia's invasion.

This conversation with Kirill Shamiev, of the Swedish Institute of International Affairs and a non-resident fellow at the Kennan Institute, will address his recent book, Imperfect Equilibrium: Civil-Military Relations in Russian Defense Policymaking, exploring the dynamic of civil-military relations in Russia both in the present and over the past several years and decades.

This conversation with Liana Fix, of the Council on Foreign Relations, will focus on her recent book, Germany Rearmed: The Return of War and the End of Illusions, with an emphasis on Germany foreign policy after the end of the Cold War, the structure of European geopolitics both before and after February 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and concluding with an assessment of the risks and opportunities posed by a Germany remared.

This conversation with Howard Amos, a journalist, will address his book, Russia Starts Here: Real Lives in the Ruins of Empire, a book that with a focus on the city of Pskov explores questions of center and periphery, of borderlands and of the historical transitions in Russia in recent years.

A conversation with Antonia Senior, a journalist, on her recent book, Stalin's Apostles: The Cambridge Five and the Making of the Soviet Empire, with a focus on the question of espionage and of loyalties divided and reconfigured in the 1930s and then again in the early Cold War.

A conversation with Juliane Fuerst, a historian at Central European University, focusing on her 2021 book, Flowers through Concrete: Explorations in Soviet Hippieland, with an emphasis on culture and counter-culture in the Soviet Union, on youth culture in the Soviet Union and on larger patterns of conformity and non-conformity.

This conversation with Jonathan Daly, a historian at the University of Illinois Chicago, will focus on his recent book, The Man Who Knew Russia: Richard Pipes, Humanist and Cold Warrior, concentrating on questions about he writing of imperial Russian and Soviet history in the twentieth century and about the relationship of academic work to policy formation in the Cold War.

This conversation with Sabine Fischer, of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, will address her book, The Chauvinist Threat: Russia's War and the West's Response, examining questions of authoritarianism, militarism and gender, not as three distinct and separate topics but as an interconnected set of themes.