Dex Hunter-Torricke

Russian studies?

Yeah, I focused on Russia's foreign policy in the world, which was already deeply destabilizing.

Wait, of everything you could have studied, why that?

I was living in Europe.

I went to do my undergrad 2003, and this was just before the European Union and NATO had expanded to the east, and Russia was about to become the bordering state.

And I immediately had questions about that.

I was a teenager.

We've got the world's largest country with a very patchy track record on human rights and rule of law and democracy.

And it's about to become our next door neighbor.

And surely we need to prepare to understand how to deal with that new strategic challenge.

And it was interesting because this was pre-Putin, you know, starting to, you know, march into other countries.

You know, 2008 when I arrived at the UN was when- He was in power by this time though, right?

Oh yeah, he took power in 2000.

Yeah, right.

And, you know-

And he was still seen as an ally of the West.

He would get invited to all these summits with Blair and Bush and so on.

Wow.

You forget that that was a time.

Yeah.