March 3 – How the Former KGB Colonel, Putin, Sees Ukraine; “Putin’s Calculus in Ukraine”; An Analyst of Popular Culture on the Academy Awards

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with Fiona Hill, the Director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution and co-author of “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin”. We discuss how much Putin sees the current crisis with Ukraine through the lens of a former KGB Colonel.

Part 2

We begin with a former senior adviser to the United Nations Secretariat and a foreign affairs expert and senior adviser to the State Department David Phillips, who has an article at The Huffington Post “Putin’s Calculus in Ukraine”.  We discuss concerns expressed by Russian-speaking Angela Merkel after a long phone conversation with German-speaking Vladimir Putin that the Russian leader is in his own world believing that Russia’s problems with Ukraine are caused by CIA and U.S. meddling, not a rejection of Russia’s corrupt and criminal model of governance personified by the deposed Yanukovych family regime.

Part 3

Then finally we hear from Toby Miller, one of the world’s leading analysts of popular culture, media, and their connection to everyday life. We discuss this year’s winner in the Academy Awards that seemed to reject politically-themed documentaries like “The Square” and “Dirty Wars” and movies with political and social content like “American Hustle”, “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “Nebraska”, in favor of the special effects-driven “Gravity”.