Vladimir Posner: How the United States Created Vladimir Putin

Ted Koppel

Some will remember Vladimir Posner as the polished Soviet spokesman with perfect English who turned up regularly in the 1980s. on the ABC News show "Nightline with Ted Koppel." to defend Soviet positions.

As it turns out, but I did not know in the 1980s, and I doubt most Americans knew, Posner was born in France (his mother was French), but, the family escaped from France ahead of invading Nazis to America where he learned his perfect English. He lived most of his youth in America, nine years, while his father, a Russian Jew, worked as an executive for M-G-M.

''I was a rich kid from New York with my own bedroom, a playroom, and my family had a cook, two maids and a summer house on Long Island,'' he has said.

But in 1949, Posner's father had been dismissed by M-G-M and blacklisted because of his pro-Soviet views, and the family moved to the Soviet-occupied zone in Berlin and in 1952 settled in Moscow, where he eventually became a radio commentator.

He now holds U. S., French and Russian citizenship.

With that as a bit of historical background, the now 84-year old Posner spoke on September 27, 2018 at an event sponsored by Yale's Program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies in conjunction with the Poynter Fellowship for Journalism.

Pozner spoke on the impact of US foreign policy towards Russia after the Soviet Union was disbanded, and shared his opinions on a range of issues raised by the audience, from the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential elections, to Skripal poisoning, to the state of independent media in Russia and the US.

His analysis of the current state of affairs between the United States and Russia is the best analysis I have come across. The below clip is two hours. He speaks for 45 minutes and then takes questions for another 75 minutes. Find the time to listen to this, if you do not listen to this you can not possibly be fully informed on the US vs Russia situation.


-RW