A conversation with German Ambassador to Italy, Thomas Bagger, on the origins of the war with a focus on the European dimensions to this conflict. This conversation will review policy thinking and choices from the 1990s to 2022, looking carefully at assessments of Russian strategy and decision making.

A conversation with Tom Graham, a Distinguished Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of the book Getting Russia Right, on the long history of the war in Ukraine, starting with the fall of the Soviet Union and moving on to various chapters in U.S. policy toward Russia and Ukraine.

A conversation with Lana Estemirova, journalist, human rights activist, and author of the memoir Please Live: The Chechen Wars, My Mother and Me. This new book provides readers an intimate glimpse into Ms. Estemirova's childhood, lived amidst the brutality of the Chechen Wars and made remarkable by the work of her mother, legendary Memorial human rights activst Natalia Estemirova. The discussion will explore the implications of the events of the 1990s and 2000s on Chechnya's political trajectory and the essential role citizens can play when they take up the call of activism.

A conversation with Michael Kofman of the Carnegie Endowment on the origns of the war, looking in particular at the military dynamics behind this conflict and at Russian notions of security and strategy, starting with the Russia-Georgia War of 2008, continuing with the first Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and exploring in detail the reasons behind Russian President Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

A conversation with Serhii Plokhy, of Harvard University, and Oxana Shevel, of Tufts University, on the state of Ukrainian studies today, exploring questions of sources and archives as well as new directions in research.

A converastion with the historian Jochen Hellbeck on his recent book, World Enemy No. 1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and the Fate of the Jews. This major new history transforms our understanding of World War II — tracing the conflict and its most infamous crime, the Holocaust, to Germany’s implacable hostility toward Soviet Russia. Hellbeck plumbs newly declassified archives and previously undiscovered sources—testimonies, diaries, and dispatches from soldiers and civilians, Soviet and German—to offer a unique history that takes account of both sides. He reconstructs the years leading up to the war when “Europe against Bolshevism” was the Nazis’ most fervid rallying cry, and documents their annihilatory ambitions on the battlegrounds in the East.

A conversation with Ambassador Daniel Fried, Wesley Family Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council and Assistant Secretary of State for Europe from 2005 to 2009. This conversation explores the deep origins of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, looking at U.S. policy choices and at patterns in the U.S.-Russian relationship.

The initiation of a major war against Iran raises many important questions about Russia’s role in the Middle East, about the war in Ukraine and about the future of nuclear nonproliferation. This event features two leading experts, Hanna Notte and Nicole Grajewski, to assess events on the ground and their broader implications.

A conversation with Jon Finer, an Advisory Council member of the Kennan Institute, and formerly the Deputy National Security Advisory on the U.S. policy choices and expectations in 2014/2015, when Ukraine was first invaded by Russia, and leading up to the massive Russian invasion in 2022, focusing on use of evidence and trying to understand decision making in Moscow.

A conversation with the historian Maurice Casey on his recent book, Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism's Forgotten Radicals. Casey reveals the connections and disconnections of a group of forgotten communist activists whose lives collided in 1920s Moscow: a brilliant Irish translator, a maverick author, the rebel daughters of an East London Jewish family, and a family of determined German anti-fascists.

A conversation with Jake Sullivan, who was National Security Advisor in the Biden Administration and is currently a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School. This conversation explores key moments, such as the events of 2014-2015, when Russia annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Sullivan examines key concepts in American foreign policy and the tools American policy makers use to understand and anticipate Russian decision making.

A conversation with literary scholar Sophie Pinkham at Cornell University on her recent book, The Oak and the Larch: A Forest History of Russia and Its Empires.

A conversation with Yaroslav Hrytsak, a historian at the Ukrainian Catholic University. This conversation explores the question of timing and in particular the question of when Russian President Vlaimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine, examining the evidentiary material available for analyzing and understanding Putin's decision making.

A conversation with historian Alissa Klots, a professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, on her book Domestic Service in the Soviet Union: Women's Emancipation and the Gendered Hierarchy of Labor.

A conversation with Sergey Radchenko, a historian at Johns Hopkins SAIS, who is currently writing a book on the origins of the war in Ukraine. This conversation explores the end of the Cold War, the rise of U.S.-Russian tensions in the early twenty-first century and the patterns of decision making that explain Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022.

In this edition of The Long View, we are joined by historian Susan Grunewald to discuss her new book, From Incarceration to Repatriation: German Prisoners of War in the Soviet Union. The conversation explores the experiences of German prisoners of war held in the Soviet Union, from captivity through repatriation, and examines how their treatment shaped postwar memory, state policy, and international relations.

On the eve of the full-scale invasion, Ambassador John Sullivan was on the diplomatic front lines in Moscow, representing a rapidly coalescing Western alliance. He and his staff witnessed first-hand the Kremlin’s attempts to sow uncertainty and eke out leverage in the runup to February 24, 2022. In this conversation, Ambassador Sullivan revisits his experience as the U.S.’s chief liaison to Russia at the most consequential moment since the fall of the Soviet Union. His insights provide a uniquely revealing picture of the Putin regime’s mentality and motivations for launching the most destructive war in Europe in eighty years.

Following a highly successful conversation last year, Thane Gustafson and Charles Hecker return to continue the discussion. This session examines how Western businesses have navigated Russia’s post-Soviet transformation and what the future may hold.

Hanna Notte, Kennan Institute Non-Resident Fellow, and Stephen Wertheim, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, address the implications of the recent U.S. intervention in Venezuela, focusing on what they may be for Russia's global foreign policy and for Russia's approach to the war in Ukraine. What are these new notions of global order being ushered in by the Trump administration, and what opportunities and challenges will Russia derive from these new (or not-so-new) notions?

S. Frederick Starr, the founding director of the Kennan Institute and a distinguished scholar, discusses his recently published memoir, Blue Skies: My Life in Many Worlds, exploring the world of Soviet studies in the 1970s and 1980s, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its aftermath and the long history of the Kennan Institute itself.

A conversation about The Dark Side of the Earth: How the Soviet Union Collapsed but Remained, a new book by Mikhail Zygar exploring late Soviet history, agency (and destiny) in this period and the rise of Putin’s Russia in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse.

A conversation with two journalists, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Bologan, taking a close look at their recent book, Our Dear Friends in Moscow: The Inside Story of a Broken Generation, which explores the evolution of the news media in Putin’s Russia and the increasingly repressive relationship between state and media after 2011.

A conversation on the book, My Russia: What I Saw inside the Kremlin, by Jill Dougherty, a non-resident fellow at the Kennan Institute and a distinguished journalist, who has often reported on and from Russia. The book tells both a personal and political story about the Soviet Union and Russia, concluding with reflections on Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

In this Long View conversation, Maria Lipman and Michael Kimmage interview Benjamin Nathans, professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and author of To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement, a recipient of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. The conversation explores the post-World War II history of the Soviet Union and the ways in which dissident activity arose from and conflicted with the evolution of Soviet culture and society.

In this Long View discussion, Linda Kinstler and Michael Kimmage interview Michael Thumann, Moscow bureau chief for Die Zeit and author of two books, Revanche (which is available in English) and Eisiges Schweigen flussabwaerts: eine Reise von Moskau nach Berlin. The conversation addresses the challenges non-Russian journalists face covering Russia, the political transitions in Russia of the past ten years and the many borders and barriers being erected between Russia and the West, as a consequence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

In this Long View discussion, Maria Lipman and Michael Kimmage interviewed Celeste Marcus, the managing editor of Liberties magazine and the author of Chaim Soutine: Genius, Obsession, and a Dramatic Life in Art. This conversation explored Soutine’s biography, his journey from the East to the West of Europe and the geography of modernism in the first half of the twentieth century.

A book talk with Ivan Kurilla and Victoria Zhuravleva about their new book, co-authored with David Foglesong, Distant Friends and Intimate Enemies, a sweeping history of U.S.-Russian relations across the centuries.

In this Long View conversation, Maria Lipman and Michael Kimmage interview the authors of two related books, Perfect Storm by Thane Gustafson, of Georgetown University, and Zero Sum by Charles Hecker, an expert on business and geopolitics. Both books are histories of Western business in post-Soviet Russia; both are histories of Russia in the 1990s; and both books help to explain Russia’s arc of development from a country importing a new economic model to the country Russian President Vladimir Putin rules today.