Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny announced this week that he was going on a hunger strike. The move came amid reports that Navalny’s health is deteriorating and his supporters are claiming that the Kremlin is slowly killing him in prison. Navalny’s announcement came just weeks after Amnesty International’s controversial decision to revoke his prisoner of conscience status over xenophobic statement he made more than a decade ago.
Today we’ll talk about Navalny as well as other issues from Russia and the former Soviet Union with a guest who is sure to bring a fresh perspective to the discussion. Terrell Jermaine Starr is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. Terrell is also a senior reporter at The Root, where he writes about US-Russia relations and about race in America. He’s the host and founder of the podcast Black Diplomats, which explores foreign affairs from a black perspective. Terrell lived in Ukraine as a Fulbright fellow and a journalist and in Georgia as a Peace Corps volunteer. He is also the author of the forthcoming book Black Man on the Steppes, which is a memoir of his time in the former Soviet Union.