Ukraine, Navalny, and other people Putin is trying to kill
This week on Black Diplomats we’ve got a new format and new guests, but have faith - we’re still taking aim at white supremacist imperialism, and there’s nothing new about that.
We’re all about giving platform to people who don’t get invited into mainstream media, and we’ve done a great job of it. We also want to broaden the foreign policy conversation by bringing in new audiences. One of the barriers for a lot of folks is basic context and geography, so we’re going to start filling in some blanks.
Host Terrell Starr will be opening the show with news highlights and a little context for the interview, including his personal stories, racial analysis, policy expertise, and historical information. These bite-sized segments help make sense out of the news and cut through the propaganda.
Our guests segments will be a little shorter, but we still won’t be talking to any Ukrainian ‘elites’!
Journalist and filmmaker Olga Tokariuk brings us the perspective from Kyiv, where there isn’t any evidence of panic, or any surprise at Putin’s bluster. Eilish Hart is a journalist and researcher who writes about the former Soviet Union. She’s been keeping a keen eye on Alexei Navalny, and joins us to explain his recent hunger strike that ended on April 23.
We hope you enjoy the new format! Let us know in email or on social media - you can find Terrell on Twitter or email us through our website.
Thank you for listening!
Olga Tokariuk
Olga Tokariuk is an independent journalist, freelance correspondent for the Spanish news agency EFE based in Kyiv, Ukraine. Her interests include international relations, disinformation research and OSINT. She is the co-author of an investigative documentary about a controversial Vitaliy Markiv trial in Italy and the author of a research paper on the role of Kremlin disinformation in it. Olga has vast experience with TV and print media in Ukraine and abroad, she is the former head of foreign desk at the independent Hromadske TV.
Eilish Hart
Eilish Hart is the news editor at the English-language edition of Meduza, a Riga-based outlet covering Russia and the former Soviet Union. She is also an Associate Scholar in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) and the editor of the BMB Ukraine Brief, a biweekly newsletter focusing on political, economic, and security issues in Ukraine. Eilish holds an MA in European and Russian Affairs from the University of Toronto.