BBG Watch
Anastasia Kirilenko, a reporter who investigated Vladimir Putin and was fired last year by RFE/RL, is scheduled to speak in Washington about Putin’s corrupt rule.
Kirilenko will appear in a panel organized by the Hudson Institute, an American conservative non-profit think tank based in Washington, D.C. Hudson Institute is also hosting the first U.S. screening and English-language premiere of the film Who Is Mr. Putin? on Wednesday, April 27th, 2016, 6:30pm to 10:00pm.
Based on investigations by journalists Anastasia Kirilenko (formerly with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) and Vladimir Ivanidze, the film documents the origins of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s private wealth and subsequent rise to power.
Anastasia Kirilenko’s most successful project when she had worked at Radio Liberty looked into the alleged illicit activities of Vladimir Putin at St. Petersburg City Hall in the early nineties. Her 2010-2012 Putin investigation was considered one of the best achievements of the Radio Liberty Russian Service in recent years, but the former Russian Service management fired her in 2015 over a disputed interview documenting new charges of corruption against Vladimir Putin. Kirilenko was banned by RFE/RL management from participating in Radio Liberty Russian programs but was interviewed recently by the Russian Service of the Voice of America (VOA).
Both RFE/RL and VOA are overseen by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). There has been a recent change in the management in Radio Liberty’s Russian Service, but RFE/RL has not had permanent top leadership for over two years. After she was fired by RFE/RL, Kirilenko has worked as a consultant for a recent BBC Panorama program on Kremlin corruption and continues to publish in the West and in independent Russian media. She now lives and works as an independent journalist in Paris, France.
SEE: A Putin Corruption Reporter Too Radical For Radio Liberty, BBG Watch, January 25, 2016
The other Hudson Institute panel participants are:
Karen Dawisha, Professor at Miami University; Director of Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies; and author of “Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?”
Ilya Zaslavskiy, Free Russia Foundation expert.
The Hudson Institute event will be moderated by David Satter, a former Moscow correspondent and a long time observer of Russia and the former Soviet Union. He is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a fellow of the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Satter continues to be interviewed by both Radio Liberty and the Voice of America.
Satter has written three books about Russia: Russia: It Was a Long Time Ago and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past (Yale, 2011); Age of Delirium: the Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union (Knopf, 1996; paperback, Yale 2001); and Darkness at Dawn: the Rise of the Russian Criminal State (Yale 2003). His books have been translated into Russian, Estonian, Latvian, Czech, Portuguese and Vietnamese. His first book, Age of Delirium, has been made into a documentary film in a U.S. – Latvian – Russian joint production. From 1976 to 1982, Satter was Moscow correspondent of the London Financial Times and later became a special correspondent on Soviet affairs for The Wall Street Journal. Satter has testified frequently on Russian affairs before Congressional committees.
SEE: David Satter on VOA: Russia needs ‘Truth Commission’ to investigate crimes of post-Soviet leaders, BBG Watch, February 15, 2016
For registration for the Hudson Institute panel discussion on Wednesday, April 27 see:
“Who Is Mr. Putin?” U.S. and English-Language Film Premiere, Hudson Institute