Abstract
“You have been brainwashed,” our Russian hosts lamented during dinner at their Moscow apartment in late April. We had asked them how they reconcile biased Russian news reports with evidence of Russian Special Operations Forces in the Crimea and eastern Ukraine. “What does Washington think it is doing by sending the CIA chief to Kiev to support those fascists?” they asked in response.
We were surprised that without exception every one of our Russian colleagues, nuclear scientists who in some cases we have known for 25 years, defended Moscow’s actions and criticized Washington and the West over Ukraine. Over after-dinner vodka, we agreed that we cannot reconcile our views of what is happening in Ukraine, so we returned to problems that require our continued attention, namely how to prevent nuclear proliferation and guard against nuclear terrorism. We agreed that we have made a lot of progress working together over the past 20-plus years, but that we are not done.
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