Posts Tagged ‘Michael McFaul’

When the Cold War ended in 1992, there was great hope for the newly formed Russian Federation. They worked closely with the US to help control the thousands of loose nukes scattered around former Soviet states like Ukraine. But following a series of major economic problems, and missteps by the West, Russia turned in a new direction, when a previously obscure ex-KGB agent named Vladimir Putin took over as President in 2000. In this episode, former US Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, and former US Secretary of Defense, William Perry talk about their up close and personal interactions with Russia through the 1990s and the 2000s, and try to make sense of how US-Russian relations have deteriorated to today’s dangerous hostility.