This Russian language video panel discussion “Opinion” (Мнение) was hosted by a Belarus broadcaster who, as I understand, is de facto RT Belarus. I was very pleased to be invited as the only out-of-region panelist, though it put my fluency to a test.
Regrettably, there seems to have been a problem with the quality of the Zoom link which brought me into this program so that the speech is choppy. Nonetheless, I am particularly content with my second ‘intervention’ in this discussion in which I brought out the fact that it is not “European bureaucrats” who are responsible for the awful, war mongering policy of the EU today, as a fellow panelist stated but the imperious usurper who occupies the post of Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, and that her policies are seconded by the conformist 24 out of 27 prime ministers of the European Union Member States, mostly male, who seem to ‘have no balls.’ I use this moment to call out the brave stand of Belgian PM Bart De Wever in opposing openly and directly von der Leyen’s schemes to confiscate frozen Russian state assets in Euroclear (Belgium) to keep the war in Ukraine going for two more years.
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 