Biografisk notat

YURI FELSHTINSKY is a historian of the Russian secret service with close ties to leading defectors. He co-authored bestsellers Blowing Up Russia (Gibson Square) with poisoned KGB Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Litvinenko, and The Age of Assassins: How Putin Poisons Elections (Gibson Square). He was a Fellow at the Hoover Institute, University of Stanford, and the first US citizen to receive a doctorate from the Russian Academy of Sciences. In Ukraine, he led the project to decode the infamous 'Kuchma tapes' recording the plot to assassinate a leading Ukrainian journalist. He appears regularly as news commentator on MSNBC, NPR, BBC and Sky TV, and in the central-European and British press. MICHAEL STANCHEV is Professor of History and Head of the History Department at Kharkiv Karazin University, Ukraine, and was an advisor to the Ukraine Foreign Office. He is the author of 17 books, and an Academician of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He regularly publishes scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals, and has lectured in the United States, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan. He lives in Kharkiv with his family.