From WNYC Studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Wednesday, July 16th.

Now we'll talk about President Trump's shifting relationship with Russia's president,

Vladimir Putin, and a long-time

adversary of, we're going to talk with a longtime adversary of Putin's autocracy, who now hosts a

podcast called Autocracy in America. It's none other than Gary Kasparov, the former world chess champion,

arguably one of the best champions of chess ever. He's also a

democracy activist who studied the rise and opposed the rise of Putinism in Russia from within

and fought against it. Now he's the co-host of the second season of the Atlantic Magazine podcast,

Autocracy in America, where he offers his take on how the United States can

avoid backsliding into autocracy. And we will also get his take on how Trump's sentiment

toward Putin is wavering. On Monday, Trump even authorized a, quote, significant shipment

of U.S. defensive weapons to Ukraine and threaten Russia with new

tariffs. Gary Kasparov, welcome back to WNYC. We're very pleased that you would come on with us again.

Hi. Thank you for inviting me. So happy to share my thoughts.

Could you give some of our listeners who may not be familiar as much with your history, the origin of

you as a Russian becoming disillusioned with and then a very strong critic of Vladimir Putin.

How did this start for you?

It started way before we even heard named Vladimir Putin.

I'm 62, born in 1963, in the very south of the Soviet Union, the now country called

Azerbaijan, city of Baku.

And by the way, half Armenian, half Jewish, but my native language is Russian.

As a chef prodigy, so I had an opportunity to travel abroad, and very quickly I recognized

...