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Hi, I'm Ben Mathis, welcome to Kickass News.

In 2008, when Michael McFall was asked to leave his professorship at Stanford and join an unlikely presidential campaign, he had no idea that he would find himself at the beating heart of one of today's most contentious and consequential international relationships.

As President Obama's advisor on Russian affairs, McFall helped craft the United States policy known as reset that fostered new and unprecedented collaboration between the two countries.

And then, as U.S. Ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, he had a front row seat when this fleeting hopeful moment crumbled with Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency.

Now he writes about it in a new book that combines history and memoir to tell the full story of U.S. Russia relations from the fall of the Soviet Union to the new rise of the hostile paranoid Russian President.

The Cold War to Hot Piece, an American ambassador in Putin's Russia, has been called an essential account of the most consequential global confrontation of our time.

And today, Michael McFall comes on the podcast to talk about it. He recalls being among the protesters outside the Russian White House during the attempted coup in 1989, and an early encounter with a young and he says unimpressive Vladimir Putin in the early 90s.

As an insider's account of being with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she presented the infamous reset button and the lavish breakfast of illegal caviar that was the first meeting between Putin and the newly elected President Obama.

He reveals how the Arab Spring wrecked the Russian reset, whether Dmitry Mejedev ever had any real power and how President Obama reacted upon learning that Putin would be returning to the presidency.

Michael talks about arriving to protesters in Moscow on his first day as ambassador. He details the Russian FSB's sinister surveillance campaigns and harassment of him and his family both on the state-controlled media and in the streets.

He attempts to describe Putin's worldview and why Putin views the U.S. as an existential threat.

The elaborate efforts President Obama and his aides went to evade Russian wiretaps and the FSB's extensive efforts to gain compromise on U.S. officials as well as certain wealthy American businessmen.

Coming up with former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFall in just a moment.

Michael McFall is Professor of Political Science, Director and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

He served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council, then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation.

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