‘2026 Is the Battlefield’
A conversation with Anne Applebaum and Garry Kasparov about authoritarian forces in America
During the post-Soviet 1990s, a popular political-satire show called Kukly ran on the Russian independent network NTV. Then-President Boris Yeltsin, for example, was regularly depicted as a feeble drunk. For about a decade, the show featured puppets that lampooned prominent political and cultural figures—until one episode, in which Vladimir Putin showed up as a grotesque, wicked dwarf. Soon after, Putin’s administration pressured NTV executives to drop the character, and ultimately the show was permanently canceled.
For people who know about it, Kukly represents a turning point in media freedom for Russia. For our two guests this week, Anne Applebaum, an Atlantic staff writer, and Garry Kasparov, the host of Autocracy in America, Kukly was the first thing they thought of when they heard about the indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show.
