MIKHAIL ZYGAR ON WAR AND PUNISHMENT: PUTIN, ZELENSKY, THE PATH TO RUSSIA’S INVASION OF UKRAINE

MIKHAIL VIKTOROVICH ZYGAR is a Russian-born journalist, writer, and filmmaker, and the founding editor-in-chief of the Russian news TV channel Dozhd (2010–2015), which halted operations in March 2022. Under Zygar's leadership, Dozhd provided an alternative to Kremlin-controlled federal TV channels by focusing on news content and giving a platform to opposition voices. The channel's coverage of politically sensitive issues, like the Moscow street protests in 2011 and 2012, as well as the conflict in Ukraine, has been dramatically different from the official coverage by Russia's national TV stations. Zygar is also the author of the book All the Kremlin's Men (2017), a history of Vladimir Putin's Russia based on interviews with Russian politicians from his inner circle.

PHIL HARLING joined the University of Miami in 2022, after nearly 30 years of teaching and administrative service at the University of Kentucky. An award-winning professor of history, he specializes in Britain and the British Empire in the 19th century. He is the author of The Waning of ‘Old Corruption’: The Politics of Economical Reform in Britain, 1779-1846 (Clarendon Press, Oxford University, 1996), The Modern British State: An Historical Introduction (Polity, 2001), and Managing Mobility: Immigration and the British Imperial State, 1840-1860 (Cambridge University Press, under contract), as well as a variety of book chapters and articles in journals ranging from Past & Present to the Journal of Modern History. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a recipient of research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Philosophical Society.