“We need to pay a lot closer attention to what Russia does to its neighbors. The Estonians were getting hacked before it was fashionable. You knew what fake news was before we did. What happens here is a harbinger of what happens to us in the future.”

Brian Whitmore, a senior editor of Radio Free Europe and host of The Power Vertical blog, is one of the leading Western analysts on today’s Russia. On the first episode of the second season of NYLA podcast, Whitmore gave an exclusive interview to Nanook’s co-founder Artūras Morozovas, a photojournalist who has been covering Russia’s geopolitical conflicts from Georgia to Chechnya to Ukraine.

Two journalists discussed how Russia branded itself as an antidote to the West, the media freedom in today’s Russia and the future of Vladimir Putin.

The episode was recorded at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, where Artūras presented the newest Nanook project “While the Red is on” about the Russian political refugees finding new home in Lithuania.

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