Lukes Discusses President Biden’s Visit to Ukraine
In an interview with the Boston Herald, Igor Lukes, Professor of International Relations and History at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, discussed President Joe Biden‘s recent visit to Ukraine and how it caught Russia by surprise.
The article, titled “Biden’s Ukraine visit slipped past Kremlin’s censors, expert says,” breaks down the fact that Biden’s trip to Ukraine caught Russian state-owned media by surprise, so much in fact that they printed the truth. Biden’s visit comes as the Russia-Ukraine war nears its second year, and while it is notable in and of itself, perhaps a little anticipated benefit was the surprise with which the president’s stroll with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took Russian government-owned media.
As Lukes said, “Curiously enough the Russian state media, like (Rossiyskaya) Gazeta and Komsomolskaya Pravda, were clearly so confused by it that they briefly published remarkably accurate accounts of what happened in Kyiv during the visit. They quoted accurately from what each side had said. They even included unedited videos of Biden.” The stories were up for hours before propagandists intervened to offer Kremlin-approved context.
The full article can be read on the Boston Herald‘s website.
Igor Lukes is a past winner of the 1997 Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 2020 winner of the Gitner Prize for Faculty Excellence at the Pardee School. He writes primarily about Central Europe. His work has won the support of various other institutions, including Fulbright, Fulbright-Hays, the Woodrow Wilson Center, IREX, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Read more about Professor Lukes on his faculty profile.