In this episode of Russian Roulette, Jeff sits down with Joanna Lillis, an Almaty-based journalist for The Economist, The Guardian, and EurasiaNet and author of the recent book Dark Shadows: Inside the Secret World of Kazakhstan, a vibrant portrait of the country based on 13 years of on-the-ground reporting. They discuss Nursultan Nazarbayev’s legacy, Kazakh identity and lots more.

You can follow Joanna, here, https://twitter.com/joannalillis?lang=en, and we recommend you purchase her excellent book through your local independent book store. 

We want more mail! If you would like to have your question answered on the podcast, send it to us! Email rep@csis.org and put “Russian Roulette” in the subject line. And, if you have one, include your Twitter handle, so we can notify you publicly when we answer your question (or, if you don’t want us to, tell us that). We look forward to hearing from you.

In this episode of Russian Roulette, Jeff sits down with Louis Lauter, Vice President for Congressional and Government Affairs at CSIS, and Colin McElhinny, Associate Director and Associate Fellow for Congressional and Government Affairs at CSIS. They discuss the role of Congress in U.S. relations with Russia, attitudes and approaches to Russia in the new Congress, and what sanctions legislation may be on the horizon. Note that this episode was recorded on January 25, before the government shutdown had ended.

You can learn more about Louis, here, https://www.csis.org/people/louis-lauter, and Colin, here, https://www.csis.org/people/colin-mcelhinny.

Be sure to check out their excellent work measuring the internationalism of Congress, here: https://www.csis.org/features/beyond-waters-edge

We want more mail! If you would like to have your question answered on the podcast, send it to us! Email rep@csis.org and put “Russian Roulette” in the subject line. And, if you have one, include your Twitter handle, so we can notify you publicly when we answer your question (or, if you don’t want us to, tell us that). We look forward to hearing from you.

In this episode of Russian Roulette, Jeff sits down with Adam Mount, a Senior Fellow and the Director of the Defense Posture Project at the Federation of American Scientists, to discuss the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, its apparent demise, and the future of nuclear arms control. Then, Jeff answers our listeners’ mailbag questions on missile defense, the link between national identity and security orders in the post-Soviet region, and the future of Crimea.

Check out Adam’s bio and his recent publications, here: https://fas.org/expert/adam-mount/

We answered your mail, and we need more! If you would like to have your question answered on the podcast, send it to us! Email rep@csis.org and put “Russian Roulette” in the subject line. And, if you have one, include your Twitter handle, so we can notify you publicly when we answer your question (or, if you don’t want us to, tell us that). We look forward to hearing from you.

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 that this is the final episode of Russian Roulette featuring co-host Olya Oliker (though not the final episode of Russian Roulette, nor, likely, even the final episode with Olya participating). Olya is off to an exciting new position as head the Europe & Central Asia division of the International Crisis Group. Olya bids her farewell and thanks to all Russian Roulette listeners. This has been one of her favorite parts of the job, and your support made it possible. Meanwhile, Jeff will continue to carry the Russian Roulette torch into 2019.
 
It’s a New Year and we need new mailbag questions! If you would like to have your question answered on the podcast, send it to us! Email rep@csis.org and put “Russian Roulette” in the subject line. And, if you have one, include your Twitter handle, so we can notify you publicly when we answer your question (or, if you don’t want us to, tell us that). We look forward to hearing from you. С наступающим 2019 годом!
 

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.atlanticcouncil.org/about/experts/list/melinda-haring#fullbio, and follow the excellent UkraineAlert blog, here, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert.

Check out video of a recent CSIS event on Ukraine’s elections, here: https://www.csis.org/events/ukraines-election-campaign.

As always, keep sending us mailbag questions! If you would like to have your question answered on the podcast, send it to us! Email rep@csis.org and put “Russian Roulette” in the subject line. And, if you have one, include your Twitter handle, so we can notify you publicly when we answer your question (or, if you don’t want us to, tell us that). We look forward to hearing from you.
 

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 consequences of the famine; Sarah’s experience researching the topic in Kazakhstan; why the Kazakh famine is so little known in the West; how Kazakh society interacts with this episode of its history; and the state (and politics) of scholarship on Soviet collectivization.
 
You can view Sarah’s bio, here, http://history.umd.edu/users/scameron, and you can purchase her book, here: http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140109782010
 
As always, keep sending us mailbag questions! If you would like to have your question answered on the podcast, send it to us! Email rep@csis.org and put “Russian Roulette” in the subject line. And, if you have one, include your Twitter handle, so we can notify you publicly when we answer your question (or, if you don’t want us to, tell us that). We look forward to hearing from you.
 

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 structure and content of the meetings, how Russia factors in U.S. domestic politics, and Phil’s impressions from a recent trip to Moscow of how Russia’s domestic political landscape is evolving.
 
You can read some of Philip’s earlier publications, here, https://www.kettering.org/content/phil-stewart, or view his work history, here, https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-stewart-a3009413/.
 
As always, keep sending us mailbag questions! If you would like to have your question answered on the podcast, send it to us! Email rep@csis.org and put “Russian Roulette” in the subject line. And, if you have one, include your Twitter handle, so we can notify you publicly when we answer your question (or, if you don’t want us to, tell us that). We look forward to hearing from you.
 

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 the United States of over-relying on sanctions, and how Russia sanctions factor into U.S. domestic politics in 2018 and beyond.
 
You can view Elizabeth’s bio and recent publications, here: https://www.cnas.org/people/elizabeth-rosenberg
 
Having trouble navigating the web of U.S. sanctions against Russia? We organized them for you. Check out the CSIS Russia Sanctions Tracker @ https://russiasanctionstracker.csis.org/
 
As always, keep sending us mailbag questions! If you would like to have your question answered on the podcast, send it to us! Email rep@csis.org and put “Russian Roulette” in the subject line. And, if you have one, include your Twitter handle, so we can notify you publicly when we answer your question (or, if you don’t want us to, tell us that). We look forward to hearing from you.
 

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 collected volume Entangled Far Rights: A Russian-European Intellectual Romance in the Twentieth Century (November 6, 2018: University of Pittsburgh Press). They discuss the genesis and evolution of European-Russian far right connections, how Russia does and doesn’t influence the European far right today, and, shifting to a debate in the Eurasia academic community, the use of the term “fascist” to describe contemporary Russia.

You can view Marlene’s bio and recent publications, here: https://elliott.gwu.edu/marlene-laruelle

We encourage you to preorder her edited volume, here: https://www.amazon.com/Entangled-Far-Rights-Russian-European-Intellectual/dp/0822965658

As always, keep sending us mailbag questions! If you would like to have your question answered on the podcast, send it to us! Email rep@csis.org and put “Russian Roulette” in the subject line. And, if you have one, include your Twitter handle, so we can notify you publicly when we answer your question (or, if you don’t want us to, tell us that). We look forward to hearing from you.
 

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. We discuss the report’s findings and the viability of this third path to European security, as well as U.S.-Russia relations, Ukraine’s future, and European security writ large.
 
You can view Sam’s bio and recent publications, here: https://www.rand.org/about/people/c/charap_samuel.html#overview
 
And you can read the report, here: https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE297.html and Sam’s book on the Ukraine crisis, co-authored with Timothy Colton, here: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781138633087
 
As always, keep sending us mailbag questions! If you would like to have your question answered on the podcast, send it to us! Email rep@csis.org and put “Russian Roulette” in the subject line. And, if you have one, include your Twitter handle, so we can notify you publicly when we answer your question (or, if you don’t want us to, tell us that). We look forward to hearing from you.