How did Putin become Putin? Amb. John Evans met the future Russian leader when he was just a deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. Evans, then serving as consul general, shares his recollections of the young Putin, situates this in the broader Russian political situation in the 1990s and the evolution of U.S.-Russian relations from the optimism of the period to today’s bitterness. We also speak about Russia’s move into Ukraine – how it came to this and where it may go.

Our guest offers a minor correction to his remarks: “It was Chip Bohlen who got the scoop on the Hitler-Stalin pact from his German colleague in Moscow. [Not George Kennan.] Bohlen tells the story in Chapter Five of his ‘Witness to History.'”