Russian President Vladimir Putin is cold and calculating, not as a “master strategist,” but as a mafia boss who intends to expand his criminal empire, David Satter said.
As a preeminent expert on Russia and post-Soviet states, Satter explains how Putin’s current warmongering in Ukraine and other countries is a continuation of his past ideas about brutal leadership leading to global domination in this conversation with Kyiv Post’s Jason Smart.
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He is the author of four books on Russia and the creator of a documentary film on the fall of the U.S.S.R. In May 2013, he became an adviser to the Russian Service of Radio Liberty and in September 2013, he was accredited as a Radio Liberty correspondent in Moscow.
Three months later, he was expelled from Russia, becoming the first US correspondent to be expelled since the Cold War. “Satter is one of the world’s leading commentators on Russia and the former Soviet Union,” according to his author's bio on Amazon.
He currently holds positions as:
- A fellow of the Foreign Policy Institute at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)
- A senior fellow of the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C.
- A senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia
- Associate of the Henry Jackson Society in London.
- and previously, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Satter teaches a course on Russian politics and history at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced Academic Programs and has been a visiting professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and a visiting fellow in journalism at Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan. David Satter’s first book was ‘Age of Delirium: the Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union,’ which was published in 1996.
He later made a documentary film on the basis of this book which won the 2013 Van Gogh Grand Jury Prize at the Amsterdam Film Festival. In addition, David Satter has written three other books about Russia, ‘Darkness at Dawn: the Rise of the Russian Criminal State’ (2003), ‘It Was a Long Time Ago,’ and ‘It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past’ (2011), and ‘The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia’s Road to Terror and Dictatorship under Yeltsin and Putin.’ His books have been translated into eight languages.”
