Before Putin had fully consolidated his power and when there was still some semblance of a free press in Russia, I several times appeared on a news magazine show hosted by NTV, a large Russian broadcast television station that reached tens of millions of people across Russia as well as Russian-speakers around the world,

What was I doing on a network that was heavily influenced by the Kremlin?

My own Russian speaking friends confirmed that, until the Russian invasion of Ukraine, NTV translators didn’t alter or censor my views on global issues such as Ukraine, the Middle East, NATO, espionage and the like. I called a spade a spade with both expertise and balance. And my appearances on Russian media were great chances for me to get my views to millions of people that normally I could not reach at all.

And why were the Russians willing to take the chances of uncensored interviews of me? I think it likely that the Russians at that time simply wanted to inject at least a small dose of balance into their broadcasts in order to improve their ratings.

But after Ukraine, there was no "balance" in Russian media and no place for me. I could no longer trust NTV not to selectively edit or otherwise manipulate what I said.

My NTV interviews followed earlier appearances by me on RT, Russia’s equivalent of CNN. Those programs were in English and consisted of me matching wits with RT’s anchors, avoiding their verbal propaganda traps and making the points I wanted to make. But when it became clear that RT, which was created in the 90’s as semi-independent media, had become nothing more than Putin’s mouthpiece, I quit.

I don't regret my associations with Russian media. In my interviews, I gave at least as good as I got. More to the point, I know that, in that era, many times I was able to present some balanced thinking to Russian minds accustomed to accepting the propaganda served up by the Kremlin. It was worth a shot.

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