The Russia Guy

Today's guest is Jack Stubbs, the European cybersecurity correspondent at the news agency Reuters and previously a correspondent in Russia and Ukraine. About a week ago, on October 1, 2020, Jack authored an exclusive story at Reuters, titled “Russian Operation Masqueraded as Right-Wing News Site to Target U.S. Voters,” about people connected to the infamous Internet Research Agency — that troll factory founded by Evgeny Prigozhin — running a fake news outlet designed to target right-wing voters with inflammatory political messaging ahead of this year’s U.S. presidential election. According to sources familiar with an FBI probe, this is the right-wing version of a nearly identical project that targeted American leftists called Peace Data.

Follow Jack Stubbs on Twitter here and read his work at Reuters here.

Music and audio for "The Russia Guy":

• Alexandr Kuzminyh, CC BY license, "TOP 12 CARTOONS ON THE GUITAR (SOVIET CARTOONS)"
• Олег Анофриев, Бременские музыканты, “Говорят, мы бяки-буки”
• Thinking Music by Kevin MacLeod / Link / License
• The Bandit by Kevin MacLeod / Link / License

Today's guest is Ben Aris, the editor-in-chief of bne IntelliNews, a media outlet he pioneered that reports on business news and data from emerging markets. Ben spent many years as a foreign correspondent in Eastern Europe, and he’s been covering Russia since 1993, with stints in the Baltics and Central Asia. He co-founded bne and is a former Moscow bureau chief for The Daily Telegraph and was a contributing editor at The Banker and Euromoney for a decade.

Follow Ben Aris on Twitter here.

Music and audio for "The Russia Guy":

• Alexandr Kuzminyh, CC BY license, "TOP 12 CARTOONS ON THE GUITAR (SOVIET CARTOONS)"
• Олег Анофриев, Бременские музыканты, “Говорят, мы бяки-буки”

Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/kevinrothrock)

Bryan MacDonald, the head of the online Russia desk at the English-language edition of Russia Today, or RT, joins “The Russia Guy” to discuss his career in journalism and his views on Alexey Navalny, Western reporting, and Russian politics.

Follow him on Twitter here.

Music and audio for "The Russia Guy":

• Ну погоди, episode 14
• Олег Анофриев, Бременские музыканты, “Говорят, мы бяки-буки”

Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/kevinrothrock)

Today’s guest is Anna Arutunyan, a Russian-American analyst and writer and the author of “The Putin Mystique: Inside Russia’s Power Cult” (2014) and “The Media in Russia” (2009) and the co-author of “Freedom, Repression, and Private Property in Russia” (2013). Her work has been published all over the place, and one of her most recent articles was released on August 5 in the magazine Foreign Affairs, titled “There Is No Russian Plot Against America.” 

Follow Anna on Twitter here!

Music and audio for "The Russia Guy":

• Ну погоди, episode 14
• Олег Анофриев, Бременские музыканты, “Говорят, мы бяки-буки”
• Thinking Music by Kevin MacLeod / Link / License
• The Bandit by Kevin MacLeod / Link / License

Today's guest is Tara Reade, the former staff assistant in Joe Biden’s Senate office, who earlier this year accused Biden of sexually assaulting her back in 1993 when she was in her late 20s. Ms. Reade has faced significant criticism not just for her allegations against Joe Biden, but also for her past statements about Russia and Vladimir Putin, which some commentators seem to believe constitute “possible Russia connections” in line with the collusion theory that Donald Trump conspired with Moscow to defeat Hillary Clinton. Ms. Reade has been asked about her views on Russia before, but not in much detail. That changes here.

For more reading about Tara Reade's allegations against Joe Biden, see the following sources:

• Megyn Kelly: The MK Interview: Tara Reade
• Current Affairs: "Tara Reade Tells Her Story" (Katie Halper's interview)
• Democracy Now! “It Shattered My Life”: Former Joe Biden Staffer Tara Reade Says He Sexually Assaulted Her in 1993
• Business Insider: A former neighbor of Joe Biden's accuser Tara Reade has come forward to corroborate her sexual-assault account, saying Reade discussed the allegations in detail in the mid-1990s
• New York Times: "Tara Reade's Tumultuous Journey to the 2020 Campaign"

Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/kevinrothrock)

Today's guest is Rob Lee, a doctoral student in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, a former Alfa Fellow, and an ex-Marine. Rob joins "The Russia Guy" to talk about the 33 Russian nationals arrested in Belarus on July 29, 2020. Officials in Minsk say the men are mercenaries from the “Wagner” private military company (PMC) who planned to incite riots ahead of the presidential election. Russian diplomats have identified the suspects as private security guards who were merely passing through Belarus.

Follow Rob's excellent monitoring work on Twitter here.

Music and audio for "The Russia Guy":

• Ну погоди, episode 14
• Олег Анофриев, Бременские музыканты, “Говорят, мы бяки-буки”

Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/kevinrothrock)

Today's show welcomes back Wilson Center Disinformation Fellow Nina Jankowicz, who first appeared on this podcast way back in December 2017. She's back now to discuss her new book, How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict, which "takes the reader on a journey through five Western governments' responses to Russian information warfare tactics" (Estonia, Georgia, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine) and "shows what is at stake: the future of civil discourse and democracy, and the value of truth itself."

Order the book here from the publisher or at Amazon, and follow Nina on Twitter here.

Music and audio:

• Ну погоди, episode 14
• Олег Анофриев, Бременские музыканты, “Говорят, мы бяки-буки”

Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/kevinrothrock)

Today’s show looks at the case against Khabarovsk Governor Sergey Furgal, whom federal agents arrested on Thursday, July 9, and promptly flew him to Moscow where he was arraigned on charges that he organized violence (including several contract killings) against business rivals in 2004 and 2005.

Today's guest is András Tóth-Czifra, a political analyst based in New York and the author of the No Yardstick blog, where he’s written for almost 10 years about Russian politics, often focusing on the country’s more remote regions.

Music and audio:

• Ну погоди, episode 14
• Олег Анофриев, Бременские музыканты, “Говорят, мы бяки-буки”
• Thinking Music by Kevin MacLeod / Link / License

Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/kevinrothrock)

A freelance journalist in Moscow with bylines in The Guardian, The Telegraph, Foreign Policy, The Nation, Politico, and more, guest Alec Luhn discusses reporting Russia’s Arctic and journalism about environmentalism more broadly. How do you sell Western readers on these themes? What does it take to get to remote areas where the climate crisis is most destructive? Listen and find out.

Follow Alec Luhn on Twitter here.

Music and audio:

• Ну погоди, episode 14
• Олег Анофриев, Бременские музыканты, “Говорят, мы бяки-буки”

Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/kevinrothrock)

Today's guest is Yuval Weber, the Kennan Institute Associate Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies. He was also the inaugural Daniel Morgan Graduate School-Kennan Institute fellow and previously taught at Harvard University as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Government.

Dr. Weber is working on a book now that asks why pro-market economic reform efforts in Russia follow similar trajectories even among very different types of government like monarchy, communism, and “sovereign democracy.”

Check out his DMGS bio here and follow him on Twitter here.

Music and audio:

• Ну погоди, episode 14
• Олег Анофриев, Бременские музыканты, “Говорят, мы бяки-буки”
• The Bandit by Kevin MacLeod
  Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4483-the-bandit
  License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Thinking Music by Kevin MacLeod
  Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4522-thinking-music
  License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/