Cspan two. Politics at russian and the influence of russian president Vladimir Putin. Speakers include a russian journalist, a former u. S. Ambassador to russia and nato and the first Russian Foreign minister who served under Boris Yeltsin. This is just over an hour and a half. John good morning. My name is john herbst. I run the Eurasian Center here at the atlantic council. Thank you all for coming. We have a Wonderful Program for you this morning. And i should mention that this is part of our series on internal developments in russia. We began with a session in october on demography in russia. And this of course is on politics. Next month, we are doing a session on the russian economy, followed by a session a session probably in april on Energy Sector in russia. We have a real treat for you this morning. We have a wonderful lineup of speakers. I will not describe them except to say yevgenia albats, a topnotch journalist from moscow, who has written a very provocative and a fascinatin
John good morning. My name is john herbst. I run the Eurasian Center here at the atlantic council. Thank you all for coming. We have a Wonderful Program for you this morning. And i should mention that this is part of our series on internal developments in russia. We began with a session in october on demography in russia. And this of course is on politics. Next month, we are doing a session on the russian economy, followed by a session a session probably in april on Energy Sector in russia. We have a real treat for you this morning. We have a wonderful line of speakers. I will not describe them except to say yevgenia albats, a topnotch journalist from moscow, who has written a very provocative and a fascinating paper on russia politically. Foreign minister kozyrev will comment on that, as will eugene rumer from carnegie. And ambassador and former deputy secretary nato, Sandy Vershbow will bat cleanup for us this morning. And with that i will turn it over to dr. Albats. Yevgenia thank y
A very provocative and russia,ing paper on politically. With that, i will turn it over to i would like to extend my to whoatitude invited me and asked me to write the paper there who invited me who invited me and asked me to write the paper. The main topic of the paper i council the democratic and in this paper, i argued that we have been witnessing the transformation of the regime in russia. History in italy with mussolini. To be sure there is no conspiracy and the story i am outlining, i am just arguing has win Vladimir Putin president in 2000, and over the years, over eight all layers staffed of the russian government, the upper levels of the government and the president ial administration and as a result, almost 60 or 70 of all positions in the top layer of the russian government were kgb and somehe people from the military intelligence group. 2015, it became clear in the public sphere that the country is run by the people who grew up or by their sons and daughters. We have witness
Guest well, i tell you, i came to washington in 2015. Won election in november 2014 and when i arrived i realized i was learning how this town is broken as opposed to just having a general feeling of the fact that it was dysfunctional. As i learned more detail, i thought its important that the American People know the details so that they can take some action, they can help fix the problem and its not going to get fixed by just people inside dc working on the problem. Its got to have americans involved. So i decided to write a book about it. Host i did want to share with viewers a bit of your history, you had a career before you came to washington, you had been a federal prosecutor, you ran on successfully for the 2010 and decided to run in 2014. Tell us about yourself and your district . Guest sure. So i actually started out of law school with dick cheney who is a congressman from wyoming at the time. That dates me a little bit but i came in 1986, in 1987i left the committee as it end
Wakeup call for us and we say, whoa, youre right. We want to be the country that we have long been with want to be the country that sets the right International Norms elm want to be the country setting the example that other people should follow that will make the world better. We need to get out there. We need to be saying to other states, yeah, we are going to be in this in between war and peace land forever where threats wont look like uniformed military personnel. So how do we collectively come up with some kind of International Rules and institutions that both recognize that those threats are real but dont throw human rights and the rule of law out the window in order to respond . Let figure this out. Its going to be hard. Let figure it out. I dont know which path well go down. W hope its the latter path. Host so, rosa, you are writing this book at a time when were about to transition administrations. People will be coming to youve, if they vest already, some shy go into governmen