Announcing PutinCon Live: Join Garry Kasparov, Yulia Marushevska, and Anne Applebaum for Inaugural Conversation

NEW YORK (March 3, 2022) — Four years ago, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) organized PutinCon in New York City. Hundreds of Putin experts, biographers, critics, and victims came together to expose his crimes and support human rights and democracy in Russia. You can see some of those discussions on putincon.com. Today, the reality of the Putin regime is clear to billions of people around the world. On February 24th, Russian forces launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Heavy artillery, missile strikes, and bombs have targeted civilian areas, destroying housing, hopspitals, and orphanages. Many of these attacks are war crimes. There are already hundreds of thousands of refugees, and many thousands of casualties.

This war is Putin’s war. His murderous, self-centered, and imperialistic behavior is responsible for a human rights catastrophe. HRF has already outlined steps the international community should take to punish the Putin regime, and suggested important organizations individuals should support to help Ukrainians. Today we are launching PutinCon Live, a new conversation series on Twitter Spaces focusing on how to support human rights in Ukraine and Russia. We are bringing together world famous activists, human rights defenders, investigators, hybrid warfare experts, technologists and policy makers to brainstorm how to hold a mad dictator accountable.

We hope you will join us for our first conversation on Wednesday, March 9th at 2PM EST between HRF Chairman Garry Kasparov, Ukrainian activist Yulia Marushevska, and historian Anne Applebaum.  They will discuss the history of Russian aggression in Ukraine, how the current conflict is shaping Europe and the West, and what democracies can do now to fight Putin. There will be an opportunity to ask questions live on Twitter Spaces, but the conversation will also be released as a podcast.