International Affairs

According to Russian journalist Masha Gessen, the 2012 arrests were the start of a campaign by Vladimir Putin and his supporters against government critics. Gessen, who is also an LGBT rights advocate, recently moved to New York with her partner and their children in response to the anti-gay laws Russia passed in June.

New York Times correspondent David Kirkpatrick spent months on the ground in Benghazi, Libya, trying to get to the bottom of the deadly Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate.

For those who viewed the end of the Soviet Union as a tragedy, Crimea was a chance to showcase Russia's strength. Now Russia may have changed its relationship with the outside world for years to come.

The NSA managed to penetrate the networks of the giant Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei, documents show. Journalist David Sanger says cyber-espionage is an "entirely new field of conflict."

Michael McFaul, ambassador to Russia from January 2012 to February 2014, says, "I've never seen [Putin] devote a speech to the necessity of reuniting Crimea with Russia. That came only recently."

On the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, author Evan Osnos discusses his new book that explores the tensions between China's economic expansion and its commitment to authoritarian rule.

Journalist Alex Perry wrote the new e-book The Hunt for Boko Haram: Investigating the Terror Tearing Nigeria Apart. He says Boko Haram doesn't have logical reasons for the atrocious acts it commits.

Last year, journalist Rukmini Callimachi found thousands of al-Qaida documents in Timbuktu in Mali. She tells Fresh Air about al-Quaida's strategy of kidnapping Europeans and demanding ransoms.

The New York Times' Sabrina Tavernise was among the first to arrive at the site of the downed flight in Ukraine in late July. She says it's hard to get the faces of the dead out of her mind.

Lawrence Wright's new book examines the 1978 peace deal President Carter brokered between Egypt and Israel. During the tense summit, Carter had "never been angrier," Wright says.

In his new book, Midnight's Furies, Nisid Hajari describes the riots and massacres that ensued after Pakistan was established as a separate state, and how those tensions are still playing out.

Fist and his wife are the only foreign journalists still living in Beirut. He has been covering Lebanon for the past fourteen years, and has a new book about his reporting, called Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War.

Despite ordering an "influence campaign" to help Donald Trump in last year's election, the Kremlin is scrambling to respond to a win it didn't expect, New Yorker editor David Remnick and staff writer Evan Osnos tell Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

Peter W. Galbraith is a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, and is now professor of national-security studies at the National War College in Washington, D.C. Since the late 1980s he has been studying Iraqi war crimes and has also worked closely with the Kurds, who control a small territory in northern Iraq. He'll talk about the effect of a war on the Kurdish people.

New York Times reporter David Sanger talks about North Korea's nuclear program and warns that the regime, which has been "fodder for late night comedians for many many years," is no joke.

Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Tom Ricks says the writings of Winston Churchill and George Orwell still resonate today. Ricks also discusses the generals serving in the Trump administration.

Washington Post correspondent Souad Mekhennet has risked kidnapping and imprisonment to report on extremist groups, such as ISIS and the Taliban. Her new memoir is I Was Told to Come Alone.

Wired's Andy Greenberg says Ukraine has been the victim of a "cyber-assault unlike any the world has ever seen." Cybersecurity experts think Russia is perfecting attacks that could be used on the U.S.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum explains how Stalin killed millions in the '30s by orchestrating a famine to suppress the nationalist movement and strengthen Russian influence in Ukraine.

New Yorker writer Alexis Okeowo wanted to get past standard journalistic narratives of war and tragedy and show people as flawed, complicated individuals in her new book, A Moonless, Starless Sky.