Former European Foreign Policy chief Catherine Ashton

Europe is welcoming Ukraine’s President Zelensky today with open arms, applauding the wartime leader even as he pushes them to provide more powerful weapons. It’s been nearly one year now since Vladimir Putin brazenly tried to take Kyiv and the rest of Ukraine, but in reality, the Russian offensive has been going on for much longer than that. It was nine years ago in 2014 that Putin invaded and annexed Crimea, spurring an international crisis. Catherine Ashton was Europe’s foreign policy chief at the time. Her new book is And Then What?: Inside Stories of 21st Century Diplomacy, and she speaks with Christiane about Putin’s tactics then and now. 

Also on today's show: actor Ian McKellen, journalist Julia Ioffe. 

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