Kremlinology: What does Russia want? Rules Based Audio podcast out now

Episode 9 of the Lowy Institute’s new podcast, Rules Based Audio, is out today. In Kremlinology: What does Russia want? the dissident Russian journalist and academic Yevgenia Albats talks about how President Vladimir Putin has dominated Russian politics for two decades; and former diplomat and analyst Bobo Lo talks about Russian foreign policy and worldview and whether Russia is forming an authoritarian alliance with China.

Yevgenia Albats is editor-in-chief of the Russian political weekly The New Times. She is also an anchor with the Echo Moskvy broadcasting and a recipient of several journalism awards worldwide. She received the Golden Pen Award in 1989, the highest journalism honour in the then-Soviet Union. She was a fellow of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University in 1993 and has a PhD in political science from Harvard. Albats is the author of four books, including The State Within A State: KGB and Its Hold on Russia Past, Present and Future. She has lectured at many universities in the US and Europe, including Yale University and Oxford University. She was a professor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. In 2018, Russian supporters of The New Times donated more than A$400,000 to pay what was seen as a politically motivated fine against the publication from the Russian government.

Bobo Lo is a Nonresident Fellow at the Lowy Institute. He is an independent analyst and an Associate Research Fellow with the Russia/NIS Center at the French Institute of International Relations. He was previously Head of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House and Deputy Head of Mission at the Australian Embassy in Moscow. He has written extensively on Russian foreign and security policy, with a particular focus on Sino-Russian relations. He is the author of Russia and the New World Disorder, which was described by The Economist as the ‘best attempt yet to explain Russia’s unhappy relationship with the rest of the world’. His latest book, A Wary Embrace: What the China-Russia Relationship Means for the World, was published in 2017. He has a MA from Oxford and a PhD from Melbourne University.

Rules Based Audio is a half-hour, fortnightly podcast covering stories from the cracks and faultlines in the global order, hosted by Kelsey Munro and powered by the Lowy Institute.

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Kelsey Munro