Expert Opinions: Russia, Eurasia

Expert Opinions: Russia, Eurasia

A podcast from the Harriman Institute at Columbia University and eurasianet.org. Masha Udensiva-Brenner interviews experts about political and cultural developments in Russia and Eurasia.

Episodes

Voices of Ukraine, Season 2, Episode 5: Immoral People

May 24, 2023 • 15 mins
Ukrainian writer and journalist Nikita Grigorov was a university student studying Russian literature at Donetsk National University when Russia launched its war in Donbas in 2014. He supported an independent Ukraine and watched in disbelief as friends turned against him, sometimes violently. Then he fled to Kyiv with his father. Listen to his story.
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Voices of Ukraine, Episode 4: Covering 2014 Donbas: A Spanish-Language Perspective

April 24, 2023 • 18 mins
Spanish journalist Argemino Barro was one of the only foreign correspondents in Donbas when Russia ramped up its destabilization efforts there in 2014. He talks about what it was like to cover the story for a Spanish-language audience.
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Voices of Ukraine, Season 2, Episode 3: No Ordinary Fourteen-Year-Old

February 9, 2023 • 23 mins
Tanya Kotelnykova was fourteen years old when Russian-backed separatists occupied Horlivka, her hometown in Eastern Ukraine. She was torn away from her family and has been displaced since.
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Voices of Ukraine, Season 2, Episode 2: Donetsk Was My Second Home

January 5, 2023 • 24 mins
Christopher Atwood lived in Donetsk in the early 2010s and found himself working in Russia during its initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Listen to his story.
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Voices of Ukraine, Season 2, Episode 1: How History Smells

November 21, 2022 • 24 mins
Katia Shraga Davydenko was born in Kyiv in the 1960s. She immigrated to New York in 1992. Since 2014, she has dedicated all her free time to protesting Russia's aggression and volunteering to help Ukrainians.
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Voices of Ukraine: Season 2 Trailer

November 16, 2022 • 1 min
Coming in mid-November with episodes dropping monthly. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
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Voices of Ukraine, Episode 12 (Season 1 Finale): Waiting for Ukraine

November 16, 2022 • 13 mins
Daniel Brennan was a Peace Corps volunteer in Hlukhiv, Ukraine when was forced to evacuate because of the pandemic. He's been trying to go back since, but the war has upended his plans. Season 1 finale.
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Voices of Ukraine, Episode 11: Mark Andryczyk on Translating Mondegreen: Songs About Death and Love

June 9, 2022 • 21 mins
Volodymyr Rafeyenko, a Russian-speaking novelist, was living in Donetsk when Russia invaded the Donbas in 2014. He fled to Kyiv, learned Ukrainian and wrote Mondegreen in Ukrainian. Mark Andryczyk translated the novel and was planning to bring Rafeyenko on book tour to the U.S. when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
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Voices of Ukraine, Episode 10: How Many Letters to You. On Ukrainian Composer Ivan Nebesnyy

June 2, 2022 • 23 mins
Ivan Nebesnyy is a renowned Ukrainian composer whose music we've been using throughout the series. In this episode you'll get an introduction to Ivan and listen to some of his work.
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Voices of Ukraine, Episode 9: In Conversation With The Kyiv Independent's Lili Bivings

May 31, 2022 • 26 mins
The Kyiv Independent's Contributing Editor Lili Bivings talks about the state of journalism in Ukraine, the implosion of the Kyiv Post, the founding of the Kyiv Independent, and the publication's coverage of Russia's war against Ukraine.
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Voices of Ukraine, Episode 8: In Conversation With The Kyiv Independent's Toma Istomina

May 19, 2022 • 20 mins
The Kyiv Independent’s Deputy Chief Editor Toma Istomina talks with the site’s contributing editor Lili Bivings about being included on Forbes 30 under 30 in Europe list, leaving war-torn Ukraine to attend a conference in Norway, and what it’s like to cover a war unfolding in your own country. This episode contains explicit language.
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Voices of Ukraine, Episode 7: In Conversation with the Kyiv Independent's Olga Rudenko

May 12, 2022 • 20 mins
The Kyiv Independent's editor-in-chief Olga Rudenko talks with the site's contributing editor Lili Bivings about her reaction to the Pulitzer citation for Ukrainian journalists and what it's like to cover a war unfolding in your own country.
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Voices of Ukraine, Episode 6: Pronouncing Kyiv and the Politics of Speaking Ukrainian

May 5, 2022 • 19 mins
Many listeners have asked Masha about her pronunciation of Kyiv (it sounds like Cave). She turned to linguist Yuri Shevchuk for a breakdown of the pronunciation and, in the process, ended up getting a lesson in politics and culture.
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Voices of Ukraine, Episode 5: Dissolved and Absorbed

April 28, 2022 • 13 mins
Olena Martynyuk was seven months pregnant and living in the U.S. when Russia invaded Ukraine. Her parents are in Ukraine and refuse to evacuate.
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Voices of Ukraine, Episode 4: Will this Be the Parting, Goodbye?

April 21, 2022 • 16 mins
Peter Zalmayev grew up in Donetsk in Eastern Ukraine and immigrated to the United States, where he got citizenship. His parents stayed in Ukraine and, in 2014, after Russia invaded Donbas, he had to evacuate them from a war zone. Two years later, Peter moved back to Ukraine, settled in Kyiv, and launched a talk show. After Russia attacked the capital he evacuated his wife and two small children to Western Ukraine and traveled back ...
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Voices of Ukraine, Episode 3: Time Stops During War

April 14, 2022 • 13 mins
After Russia invaded Ukraine, Antonina Berezovenko stayed in Kyiv in spite of the constant shelling. She is one of the few people left in her building, sheltering in the basement during air raids.
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Voices of Ukraine Episode 2: The Fight for Independence

April 7, 2022 • 18 mins
Mariya Chukhnova was born in Lutsk in Western Ukraine in the late 1980s. She participated in the Orange Revolution while she was in college. Then, like many Ukrainians of her generation, she ended up immigrating abroad and watching Ukraine’s transformation, and now the war, from afar.
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Voices of Ukraine, Episode 1: No Comfort in a Safe Place

March 31, 2022 • 21 mins
Serhii Tereshchenko, a Columbia University doctoral student, was working on his dissertation in Kyiv and planning to get married when Russia invaded Ukraine. On his scheduled wedding day, he evacuated to Lviv with his fiancée and her sister.
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Introducing Voices of Ukraine

March 28, 2022 • 3 mins
Introducing our new podcast, Voices of Ukraine. Hear stories of lives upended by Russia's war against Ukraine. Trailer written and produced by Masha Udensiva-Brenner and edited by Daniel Alarcón.
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Episode 10: Researching Climate Change in the Russian Arctic: Can the West Turn the Kremlin Green?

September 21, 2021 • 29 mins
In the latest episode of Expert Opinions, a podcast from the Harriman Institute at Columbia University and Eurasianet, Masha Udensiva-Brenner interviews Kimberly Marten about her research on climate change in the Russian Arctic.
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