In the midst of one of the darkest acts of aggression in modern history – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – award-winning journalist John Sweeney came to Intelligence Squared to draw on thirty years of his own reporting – from the Moscow apartment bombings to the atrocities committed by the Russian Army in Chechnya, to the annexation of Crimea and a confrontation with Putin over the shooting down of flight MH17 – to help us understand the true extent of Putin’s long war.

Drawing on his new book Killer in the Kremlin, which documents eyewitness accounts and compelling testimony from those who have suffered at the hands of Putin and his entourage, he discussed the heroism of the Russian opposition, the bravery of the Ukrainian resistance, and the brutality with which the Kremlin responds to such acts of defiance, assassinating or locking away its critics, and stopping at nothing to achieve its imperialist aims.

Sweeney threw a light on Putin’s sinister ambitions and poses urgent questions about how the world should respond.