As the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev is one of the 20th Century’s most defining politicians, a figure equally defined by the vision of transparency that led his efforts to expand and restructure his nation, and the lost potential left in the wake of the USSR’s disintegration. Nearly three decades since his removal from power, the 87-year-old Gorbachev sits down with Herzog for a series of exclusive one-on-one conversations on his remarkable life and legacy, at a time when the former President finds himself more removed than ever from the defining ideologies of Russian leadership.

The film is both a riveting documentary and deeply humanising portrait filled with unforgettable archive plus interviews with key political players from the last thirty years. As Herzog explores the conditions of Gorbachev’s unlikely rise to power and subsequent achievements through a surprisingly candid and friendly rapport, his ever-present themes soon emerge to shape a timely study of the unstable and temporal nature of those in the world’s most powerful positions.

“With Mikhail Gorbachev… Werner Herzog has finally met his match.” – Indiewire 

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with co-director André Singer and producer Svetlana Palmer chaired by journalist and producer Carol Nahra. 

Speakers:

André Singer is a filmmaker and anthropologist. He worked for Granada Television in the 1970s on World in Action and A Disappearing World. In the 1980s for the BBC he founded the documentary series Fine Cut (which later became Storyville) where he worked as either a Commissioner, Executive or Producer with many leading filmmakers including Jean Rouch, Fred Wiseman, D A A Pennebaker, Bob Drew, Mike Grigsby and Vikram Jayanti, and where he first linked up with Werner Herzog by commissioning Lessons of Darkness. He has played a role subsequently on fourteen of Werner’s films including being Producer on Into the Inferno, The Wild Blue Yonder and Fireball. More recently as an Executive Producer and through his company Spring Films in London, Singer worked on Josh Oppenheimer’s Oscar nominated films The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence. As a director he was awarded the RTS, Peabody and an Emmy for his 2015 Holocaust film Night Will Fall and in 2017 completed the anti-nuclear film Where the Wind Blew which won the Raven Award for best feature documentary at DocUtah. His current film as co-director with Herzog is Meeting Gorbachev which will be launched in the UK in November to coincide with commemorations of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. As an anthropologist he was President of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland between 2014 and 2018 and is currently a Professorial Associate of SOAS.

Moderator: Carole 

In 2016 a sociological survey on the war revealed a number of problems: Ukrainian legislation didn’t allow women to be assigned to combat positions, so they were enlisted as cooks, seamstresses, cleaners, accountants etc. while taking part in military combat operations as snipers, grenade launcher operators, reconnaissance soldiers, artillerists etc. This was done on semi-legal grounds. Thus, the majority of women who were at Donbas war were not enlisted officially and subsequently had no access to social or military benefits, military awards, social status, or career opportunities in the Armed Forces. The contribution of women to the defence of the country was and still is invisible to society. A powerful advocacy campaign for gender equality in the Armed Forces of Ukraine was initiated and thus the film was born.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsGnbaLQ82Y&t=3s

Run Time: 1 hr 29 mins

Chair

Lucy Ash is an awarding-winning broadcast journalist with more than 20 years’ experience as a BBC correspondent, presenter and senior producer. Her most recent work includes Ukraine’s Frontline Bakery, a radio documentary and film about a new bakery in the town of Marinka, in Eastern Ukraine which is bringing some comfort and sustenance to local people amidst the trauma of war. (Radio 4 , World Service and BBC World TV) and The Red and the White, a three part radio series on the Allied Intervention in North Russia at the end of WW1 and a half hour film (BBC World Service and BBC Russian)

Speakers

Maria Berlinska (producer) is a founder of the Ukrainian Centre for Aerial Reconnaissance in Kyiv and has been volunteering for the Ukrainian Army since the start of the conflict (both by flying drones at the frontline and training others to operate drones in Kyiv). In addition, Maria set up an Institute for Gender Programmes and initiated a sociological study about women who serve in the ongoing war (you can find their report here: http://www.uwf.org.ua/en/project_activities/invisible_batallion).

Olesya Khromeychuk teaches Modern European History at King’s College London and researches the participation and representation of women in military formations during the Second World War and in the ongoing conflict in the Donbas region of Ukraine. She is the author of ‘Undetermined’ Ukrainians. Post-War Narratives of the Waffen SS ‘Galicia’ Division (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2013)

In the frontline town of Marinka, a new bakery has opened which brings some comfort and sustenance to war-weary locals. The film follows the people who run the bakery and the customers, as they struggle to gain a sense of normality among the rumble of war.

Chair

Roland Oliphant  is a Senior Foreign correspondent to the Telegraph and until recently covered Russia and the former Soviet Union from the Moscow bureau. He has reported on the Ukrainian revolution and civil war from Kiev, Crimea, and Eastern Ukraine.

Speakers

Albina Kovalyova (producer / director)  –  is an independent documentary producer/director, with extensive experience of covering the Ukrainian conflict from both sides of the line for major global television channels including NBC, Channel 4, BBC World and Al Jazeera. Her other documentary work includes films about the Belarus Free Theatre, Nenets Reindeer herders in Russia’s Arctic region, and Ukraine’s Aids Epidemic for the BBC, and an independent documentary about the Dau film set in Kharkiv. She is fully bilingual in Russian and English and has dual nationality.

Lucy Ash (presenter)– is an awarding-winning broadcast journalist with more than 20 years’ experience as a BBC correspondent, presenter and senior producer. Her most recent work includes: Ukraine’s Frontline Bakery (Radio 4, World Service and BBC World TV) a radio documentary and film about a new bakery in the town of Marinka, Eastern Ukraine, which is bringing some comfort and sustenance to the local people amidst the trauma of war; The Red and the White (BBC World Service, BBC Russian) a three part radio series on the Allied Intervention in North Russia at the end of WWI;Russia’s Exit Dilemma (Radio 3, World Service) in which Ash meets emigres, exiles and staunch remainers in London and Berlin, Moscow and St Petersburg to weigh up the prospects for the young and ambitious in today’s Russia. Other works by Lucy Ash includes Putin’s Park, Rebooting Rural Russia and Extreme Selfies – Russian Style, amongst many others. Ash’s freelance work outside of the BBC, includes the Guardian, The Times, and The Daily Telegraph. A half hour film When the West Invaded Russia, by Lucy Ash is due to be broadcast in March 2018.

Dr Anna Matveeva is a visiting research fellow at Kings College London. She is a member of the Russia and Eurasia Security research group. Her work specialises in conflict studies and developmental aspects of international peace building. The geographical remit of her interests covers conflicts in the Ukraine, the North and South Caucasus, and in Central Asia. Most recently, she has published a book, Through Times of Trouble: Conflict in Southeastern Ukraine Explained from Within (Russian, Eurasian, and Eastern European Politics) based on first hand accounts of participants themselves.

The area of East Ghouta is said to be one of the last strongholds of resistance by Syrian opposition forces and as such the target of renewed violence by the forces of President Bashar al-Assad and his foreign allies.

The panel invited for the talk included Dr Abdulkarim Ekzayez, a Syrian medical doctor and an epidemiologist; Leila Al-Shami, a founding member of Tahrir-ICN, a network that aims to connect anti-authoritarian struggles across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe along with Dr Idrees Ahmad, a Lecturer in Digital Journalism at the University of Stirling. The evening was hosted by BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen.

Bowen began by asking Dr Ekzayez how he manages to work and provide medical care in hostile situations such as East Ghouta to which replied:

We see the same patients that we discharged a few days ago, with even more serious injuries, but they (hospitals) don’t have space to treat patients, they don’t have the medical supplies…they don’t have food, water or any essentials. Even the word catastrophe can not describe what’s happening in East Ghouta.

What can done about the conflict in Syria? UK could expand its Syrian vulnerable persons resettlement scheme, support the 5.5m Syrian Refugees into work + schools & help rebuild Raqqa – @BowenBBC at @frontlineclub with @LeilaShami pic.twitter.com/64thtTW1ap

— James Denselow (@jamesdenselow) March 13, 2018

He went on to explained that the Assad regime causes delays and confiscates certain medical supplies provided by UN humanitarian convoys and  they hardly reach the population or meet their basic needs.

He further added: “My interpretation is that they (Assad Regime) use this tactic to weaken the community, because this scenario happened many times before…in Baba Amr in Homs, in Eastern Aleppo and other places. First, they besiege the area, then they target all the civilians, so people don’t have access to healthcare or any essentials.”

The lack of a concerted effort on part of the international community was raised by Al-Shami. She pointed out that the UN has not managed to get aid in these besieged areas such as Eastern Ghouta and starvation is being used as a weapon of war. She commented:

This should not be a negotiating principle, this is a basic humanitarian standard.  The aid has to reach these communities in need. We need more efforts, we need air drops of aid. The international community has to start asking questions when a regime purposefully stops aid and starves people, what they can do?

"Civil society, suppressed under Assad but multiple in opposition controlled areas = hope for future of #Syria" #EastGhouta @frontlineclub pic.twitter.com/NYsZSDvL2C

— Suzy Madigan (@Suzy_Madigan) March 13, 2018

Further along in the discussion Bowen turned to Dr Idress to see what he thinks the international community can do besides watching the conflict unfold and discussed UN’s classification of words such as ‘besiege’ and ‘hard to reach areas’.

In terms of expectations from the UN agencies Dr Idress explained:

The problem is that the UN has no international backing. The UN alone cannot enforce resolutions. Its efforts have been repeatedly thwarted even for humanitarian efforts and we have had 11 vetoes from Russia which blocks any kind of accountability. In the absence of this it doesn’t have any mechanism with which to confront the regime. So, it’s incumbent on the states which are supposed to be guarantors of world order, but what we have seen is a collapse of that.

One of the questions raised from the audience in this open discussion was on the support for the Syrian government. On this Dr Ekzayez commented that the Syrian regime is not similar to any other authoritarian regime. It relies roughly on 2500 people within its core structure and each person from this inner core was holding positions of power within institutions such as the army, The Ba’ath Party and society agencies. They similarly had links within communities who had shared interests with the regime.

After the formal ending of the conversation for the evening the panel and audience continued to discuss their individual points on the unfolding of events in East Ghouta in the members room on the lower floors of the Frontline Club.

Sergei Skripal, a former colonel in Russia’s military intelligence arrived in the UK in 2010 after he was discovered selling secrets to the MI6. He was part of a ‘spy swap’ program that allowed him to relocate to England.

The question remains, who is really behind this attack? Why would Mr Skripal be attacked now after living under the radar for 8 years? What can the investigation hope to look like, and what can we know so far in comparison to previous cases of attacks of Russian citizens on British soil such as Alexander Litvinenko and Alexander Perepilichnyy?

Chair

Oliver Bullough is a prize-winning writer, broadcaster and journalist, who has written in, around and about the former Soviet world for the last decade and a half. Bullough spent 7 years in Russia from 1999 as a correspondent for Reuters. His book The Last Man in Russia: And the Struggle to Save a Dying Nation is about the effect of Stalinism on future generations. Bullough is currently investigating fraud, money-laundering and international corruption and chairs our regular Kleptoscope nights at the Frontline Club.

Speakers

Jane Bradley is an investigations correspondent for BuzzFeed News. She is the co-author of Buzzfeed’s investigation into the suspected Russia-linked assassination Alexander Perepilichnyy ‘Poison in the System’  and 14 other suspected Russia-linked deaths on British soil. Bradley was one of the youngest senior broadcast journalists at the BBC at 24 before going on to work as a producer for Panorama. Bradley has worked for the likes of Channel 4/Dispatches, PBS Frontline, New York Times before joining Buzzfeed in 2015.

Marina Litvinenko  is a writer, known for Death of a Dissident, Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File (2007). She was previously married to Alexander Litvinenko.

Chris Phillips is former Head of the National Counter Terrorism Security Office with particular expertise in Counter Terrorism strategy. He co-ordinated the Counter Terrorist security for visits to the UK from foreign governments and dignitaries. His specialism is in the field of strategic counter terrorism advice and best practice.

Mary Dejevsky is a writer and broadcaster and chief editorial writer for the Independent. She is a former foreign correspondent in Moscow, Paris and Washington, and a special correspondent in China and many parts of Europe.

Is truth stranger than fiction? Kompromat was originally conceived as a counter-factual, satirical work of fiction. However, in light of recent events, has Stanley in fact, pinpointed some of the glaring truths behind 2 of the biggest political earthquakes in recent history?

Kompromat explores, in a light-hearted way, the increasingly plausible possibility of Russian involvement in both the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s election as the 45th President of the United States.

Link to book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kompromat-Stanley-Johnson/dp/1786074141

Stanley Johnson

Stanley Johnson is a former MEP, environmental campaigner, journalist and author of twenty-five books. Stanley won the Newdigate Prize for Poetry and has awards from Greenpeace and the RSPCA. He recently received the RSPB Medal as well as the WWF’s Leader of the Living Planet Award, both awarded for services in conservation. In the run-up to the EU Referendum 2016, he founded and co-chaired Environmentalists for Europe. Stanley Johnson recently starred in ITV’s I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! He was one of the first presenters of More 4’s The Last Word, and has appeared on Have I Got News For You, The One Show, Pointless and the Fake News Programme.

Rachel Johnson

Rachel Johnson is a journalist, author and television presenter. Rachel is an author of seven books as well as currently a columnist for The Mail on Sunday. Over her career she has worked for the BBC, The Financial Times, The Evening Standard and several other publications.  In 2014 Rachel was a judge on the BBC Woman’s Hour Power List. She sits on the boards of Bright Blue, the modernising Tory think-tank, and Intelligence Squared. 

Vladimir Putin seeks re-election on March 18 and there isn’t much doubt about the outcome. The question now is what he’ll do in his fourth term as Russian president.

Putin has put Russia at the centre of world attention. Thanks to his intervention in Syria, his invasion of Ukraine, and his hacking of the US election, he is at the eye of a raging storm of controversy that has inspired millions of words of often fevered, and occasionally deranged commentary. The Russian constitution requires that he stands down after this term: will he be a lame duck? Or can the great tactician find a way to stay in control?

The Frontline Club has gathered three of the coolest observers of the Russian political scene to dissect Putin’s past and future, and to ask what will happen now for the world’s largest country.

Chair

Oliver Bullough, host of the Frontline Club’s popular Kleptoscope series and himself a former Moscow correspondent.

Speakers

Ellen Barry reported from Moscow for the New York Times between 2008 and 2013, the last two years as bureau chief, winning a Pulitzer Prize. She is now an International Correspondent at the paper’s London bureau.

Arkady Ostrovsky is Russia and Eastern Europe editor at The Economist, which he joined in 2007 as Moscow bureau chief after a decade as a Moscow correspondent at the Financial Times. His book The Invention of Russia won the 2016 Orwell Prize.

Shaun Walker is the outgoing Moscow correspondent for the Guardian, having previously reported for The Independent from Russia. He has distilled his experiences into his newly-published The Long Hangover, which analyses how Putin has exploited the past to cement his hold on Russia’s future.

Copies of The Long Hangover will be for sale at the event.

Fogel’s investigation into doping — the art and science of evading drug tests in global athletic competitions — leads him to Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the scientist in charge of Russia’s anti-doping laboratory. Over a year of Skype calls and visits from Moscow, Dr. Rodchenkov orchestrates a steroid regimen for Fogel designed to game the system. When news breaks of an alleged Russian plot to cheat the Olympics, Fogel discovers that Rodchenkov is in possession of state secrets.  Within days, Rodchenkov confides to Bryan that his life is in danger, setting off a chain of events revealing a conspiracy with its roots at the heart of the Kremlin.  Rodchenkov escapes to the United States with Fogel’s help and becomes a whistleblower.

The revelations first made by Rodchenkov in the film, have since been corroborated by multiple forensic and journalistic investigations. His on-camera testimony along with the film itself was cited as critical evidence in The International Olympic Committee’s decision to ban Russia from the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Watch the trailer here.

Chair

Luke Harding is a foreign correspondent for the Guardian and was the Russia correspondent from 2007 – 2011 whereupon he was refused re-entry to the country due to his reporting. He is the author of Mafia State, which describes the political system under Putin

Speakers

Bryan Fogel (Director)

Dan Cogan (Producer)

Bill Browder is the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, which was the investment adviser to the largest foreign investment fund in Russia until 2005, when Bill was denied entry to the country and declared a “threat to national security” as a result of his battle against corporate corruption. Following his expulsion, the Russian authorities raided his offices, seized Hermitage Fund’s investment companies and used them to steal $230 million of taxes that the companies had previously paid. When Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, investigated the crime, he was arrested by the same officers he implicated, tortured for 358 days, and killed in custody at the age of 37 in November 2009. Since then, Browder has spent the last 5 years fighting for justice for Mr. Magnitsky.

We see mafias as vast, powerful organisations, harvesting billions of dollars across the globe and wrapping their tentacles around everything from governance to finance. But is this the truth? Travelling from mafia initiation ceremonies in far-flung Russian cities to elite gambling clubs in downtown Macau, Federico Varese sets off in search of answers. Using wiretapped conversations, interviews and previously unpublished police records, he builds up a picture of the real men and women caught up in mafia life, showing their loves and fears, ambitions and disappointments, as well as their crimes.

Mafia Life takes us into the real world of organised crime, where henchmen worry about their bad managers and have high blood pressure, assassinations are bungled as often as they come off, and increasing pressure from law enforcement means that a life of crime is no longer lived in the lap of luxury. As our world changes, so must mafias. Globalisation, migration and technology are disrupting traditions and threatening their revenue streams, and the Mafiosi must evolve or die. Mafia Life is an intense and totally compelling look at these organisations and the daily life of their members, as they get to grips with the modern world.

The panel, chaired by prominent investigative journalist Oliver Bullough, examined ground-breaking stories focusing on Arab Spring countries. They explored how kleptocrats from the region have used the services of the British capital to retain and launder their money.

Ala’a Shehabi of Bahrain Watch addressed the Frontline Club, explaining the extent corruption has plagued Bahrain. In recent years, extensive sections of the island’s surrounding waters have been dredged and reclaimed as land, with more than 65 km2 of Bahrain’s land having been privatised in the process ‘the sea was literally disappearing’.

Corrupt Bahraini officials and others exploited this land reclamation as a means to generate vast wealth, selling land and the developments built upon it for enormous profits. The wealth created in the process has since flowed into London, and is particularly prevalent in the capital’s housing market.

‘London is being used to… hide and stash dirty money away. It is a guaranteed safe investment… because it has an accelerating housing market and no one will know who you are. The minute we expose who these people are, the incentives to come to London will disappear,’ explained Shehabi.

Bahrain Watch has worked to expose the financial exploitation committed by the nation’s elites, and has had recent success in revealing the money flowing through the King’s own company ‘Premier Group’. 21 high-end London properties belong to the company’s portfolio, including The Four Seasons and The Marriot on Park Lane. Shehabi described the company as being involved in the ‘alchemy of making money from sand’.

Prior to receiving a leak detailing the corporate structure of the group the information pertaining to the company’s ownership structure and property holdings had been successfully obscured. When Bullough asked her about the difficulty of exposing financial malpractice in Bahrain before she obtained this data, Shehabi said ‘It was a web of information which had been completely obscured. Who owns the sea? This was never registered as public land.’

Shehabi points to the Arab uprising of 2011 as being a pivotal moment for the nation’s people in finally registering their discontent at the widespread corruption that had engulfed the island and its political class. However, she decried the failure of media coverage to pick up on this source of anger as a critical driving force for the political revolt, ‘that’s a story that hasn’t been properly told yet’.

Speaking passionately about the struggles she now encounters in trying to access her homeland, Shehabi concluded by referring to the important work she is now doing in London to combat the flow of wealth out of Bahrain and away from the nation’s own citizens.

Ben Cowdock of Transparency International outlined the sheer scale of the illicit money generated during the Arab Spring, much of which has since flowed through the UK. The National Crime Agency estimates that tens if not hundreds of billions of illicit cash flows through the UK each year.

The misappropriation of state budgets within certain Middle East states in recent years has resulted in huge sums of money being accumulated in the hands of a very select few individuals. Cowdock gave the striking example of Syrian state finances, with Bashar Al Assad’s cousin reportedly owning 60% of the national economy in 2011 according to Transparency International. Illicit money owned by such individuals has flowed into London in vast quantities following the Arab Spring.

Explaining why the capital is a hive of activity for the channelling of such funds, Cowdock said: ‘The UK is a safe haven for corrupt money. It’s a safe haven because it’s a global financial hub, so trillions of pounds come through the UK each year. It’s easy to hide that money within legitimate money. It’s a stable legal environment, you’re unlikely to have your assets taken off you by the government… and has a thriving property market so you’re able to buy gold blocks of bullion in the sky.’

Referring to the network of ‘professional enablers’ that exist within the UK, Cowdock detailed the money being made by professional services in London through the trade of illicit money via property. He highlighted legal firms, banks and estate agents as being just a few of the industries who are generating money as a result of this financial traffic, be that implicitly or explicitly.

The UK’s close links with overseas territories such as the British Virgin Islands and other notable tax havens has made it an increasingly attractive destination for illicit money. Cowdock spoke passionately about the need for the UK to bolster transparency, asset recovery systems and defences against such practice in the future if the capital and the nation as a whole is to combat the problem effectively.

Richard Brooks of Private Eye revealed to the audience the map Private Eye have put together detailing property acquired by overseas companies within the UK from 2005-2014. The map helps to track the flow of dirty money in the UK, designating the ownership details of the vast extent of real estate owned across the nation by foreign companies.

Brooks suggested many of these companies have links to offshore banking and investment programmes, which act as a channel and safe haven for illicit funds.

When asked by Oliver Bullough as to why we put up with such practices, Brooks replied jovially that the UK is keen not to put off entrepreneurs,’we are open for business remember.’

Brooks delighted the crowd when he revealed the case of an underground parking space in Kensington being owned by a company in St Lucia, detailing the truly absurd flow of capital and ownership structure in this instance. His point was well made, he documented to the audience extremely effectively the nature of the high-end property market in London and its murky finances using this and other examples.

Responding to a question pertaining to the importance of greater regulation in this area, Brooks made the moral case for a tighter legal framework, saying: ‘laws serve a purpose of saying we don’t think this is great, meaning such behaviour becomes less socially acceptable.’ Cowdock supported this view, arguing there is a need to ‘create larger disincentives for companies and individuals involved and raise awareness of the moral and financial cost of enabling and facilitating dodgy money transactions.’

When asked about comparisons within Europe regarding the issue of illicit money flows, Brooks revealed that ‘the EU has been a pretty positive force in the last few years regarding financial transparency. It’s certainly dragged along other countries like the UK.’ He expressed concern over the potential impact of Brexit in this area.

The panel united in calling for greater transparency of data from central government, better protections and incentives for whistle-blowers and enlarged anti-corruption budgets.

Cowdock finished: ‘dirty money follows the path of least resistance. Greater regulation raises the obstacles to its passage.’

*This was the second talk in the Frontline Club’s series of Kleptoscope events investigating corruption and dirty money in London: interrogating its origins, its launderers and how it gets spent. The first Kleptoscope event featured three ground-breaking stories focusing on the former Soviet Union, and explored how Russian kleptocrats have used the services of the British capital to retain and launder their money; how London’s property market has become a piggy bank for the world’s corrupt elite; and how ex-Soviet businessmen have covertly funded MPs and parliamentary groups, gaining preferential treatment as a result.