News X World interview on the significance of President Putin’s upcoming annual Direct Line Q&A
It was a pleasure earlier today to be given a time slot in NewsX World’s round-up of key global developments to talk about the soon to be scheduled 4 hour annual Direct Line of President Putin taking questions from the nation, by call-in, and from the journalists representing global press and broadcasters who are present in the auditorium where Putin holds forth.
This event will be closely watched by everyone commenting on Russian affairs, although most of the show will be about domestic Russian concerns like pensions, inflation, the availability of nursery schools and good medical facilities across the country. Nonetheless some 10 to 20 percent of the time Putin will address international issues like the Ukraine war which are of particular interest to us foreign observers.
I was glad to be asked about the tight control which the Kremlin exerts over television and the mass media, because it gave me the opportunity to counter the generally held opinions in the West over our free press and their state run press. The reality is much more interesting as I hope you will discover by listening to this 5 minute interview
Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write.
Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975).
After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility.
From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University.
Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels.
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Gilbert Doctorow 