Jana Bakunina and Joe Luc Barnes

Russian dissident author and journalist Jana Bakunina and journalist Joe Luc Barnes discuss what life is like in Russia and its satellites today and what people really think about Putin and war in Ukraine.
 
Bakunina came to study at the University of Oxford in 1998 and went on to have a career in UK finance journalism and as a novelist. In The Good Russian: In Search of a Nation’s Soul, she writes of her return to her home city of Yekaterinburg in 2023, shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She describes a booming city seemingly untouched by war where people are happy to go along with the regime or stay out of politics. Her once liberal father has channelled his disappointments into becoming a fan of Putin. Bakunina asks what happens when a country you love is gripped by nationalism and what hope is there when voices of conscience are silenced?

Barnes is a fluent Russian speaker who first arrived in the country in 2014 as governor to an Oligarch’s son. He travelled across the former Soviet Union for Farewell to Russia: A Journey through the Former USSR, to discover how each country had navigated its 35 years of independence. Barnes, a journalist based in the region, says it is an area the West misunderstands, and he warns of what happens when empires break but the habits of empire live on.