CNN’s former Moscow bureau chief discussed her career as an American journalist in Russia, the country’s political history and her new book at the Elliott School of International Affairs Wednesday.
Jill Dougherty, who served as the Moscow bureau chief for CNN from 1997 to 2006, talked about her 2025 memoir, “My Russia: What I Saw Inside the Kremlin,” which charts the evolution of Russian politics from the Cold War to the rise of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine through her eyes as an American journalist. The Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies hosted the event, which was moderated by Ivan Grek, director of The Russia Program at GW, a research program that studies Russia.
Dougherty retired from her role as a CNN correspondent in 2013 after three decades, but continues to serve as a contributor providing expert commentary on Russia for the network.
She said she begins the book with her experience covering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, where she witnessed a “master class” in Russian propaganda as the country first denied it was going to invade Ukraine and then tried to spin the invasion as justifiable. She said she witnessed the Russian government “rolling out” its invasion of Ukraine in a “very methodical way.”
“So it begins literally, and I hope cinematically, in Moscow as I’m in the bureau doing live shots, and this is right before the invasion,” Dougherty said.
Following the prologue, the book outlines Dougherty’s experience with Russia chronologically, from studying Russian in school in her hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, to covering the war in Ukraine for CNN.
Dougherty, who grew up learning Russian during the Cold War, said she began studying the language in school so that she could know the “language of the enemy.” She said her father was an FBI special agent and she thought of studying Russian as a way to “help your country.”
“There were a lot of things that I did that would not have been possible if it hadn’t been the Cold War, and if the United States hadn’t responded to the space race and put money into the study of critical languages,” Dougherty said.
Dougherty said she first traveled to the Soviet Union in 1969 with her twin sister through the National Defense Foreign Language fellowship, a U.S.-funded scholarship that provided funding and support to students studying languages and cultures in foreign countries considered strategic to the United States. Congress created these fellowships in 1958 as part of the National Defense Education Act, and they are now called Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowships.
Dougherty said the fellowship provided her with a better understanding of the Soviet Union because it allowed her to interact and meet Soviet people. She said she used the letters she wrote to friends and family during her time as a student to jog her memory while she wrote her book.
“It’s another thing to live in a dormitory with Soviet students from Ukraine and run out of hot water and have to go to the banya and talk with people and take the tram in Leningrad,” Dougherty said.
Dougherty said she began her career as a Russian-language broadcaster for Voice of America’s USSR division. She said she wants her book to be useful to young people interested in recent Russian politics by providing a first-hand historical account of her time there as a student in the Soviet Union through today’s current authoritarian state.
Dougherty said throughout her career she has spent time retracing Putin’s life and rise to power. During the talk, she showed pictures of the neighborhood where Putin grew up in Leningrad and archival photos of him as a young boy in the Soviet Union.
Dougherty said she feels some “compassion” for Putin, though it is “difficult” for her to discuss his role in leading Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She said understanding his childhood in post-war Leningrad in the aftermath of a 900-day siege during World War II with his mother nearly dying and his father away at war, helped her understand the leader he became.
“I think he was warped by this experience,” Dougherty said. “Now, other people had the same experience and came out of it normal, and many of them were my friends, so I’m not making excuses.”
Dougherty said she teaches a course at Georgetown University called “The Putin Generation,” and that she was teaching the class virtually when she covered the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 from Moscow. She said she used her connections in Russia to bring in guest speakers to her class, like two Russian girls who were “horrified” by the invasion and contemplated leaving Russia in response as well as a Russian boy who was in full support of Putin and the war.
Dougherty said these discussions were “valuable” for her students as they were able to interact with two different perspectives on the invasion. She said she intentionally used these discussions to end her memoir, beginning with her experience as a 20-year-old in Russia and ending with her 20-year-old students’ experience learning about Russia through her class.
“I wanted to kind of bookend it with the idea of what Putin is doing to not only to Ukraine, which is unimaginable, but what is he doing to Russia?” Dougherty said. “What’s he doing to the next generation? Where is Russia going to go after this?”
