This is the Brian Laris show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone.

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 long-time 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 threatened 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 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 of Vladimir Putinzans i'm 62 born in 963 in the very

south of the soviet union in the now country called asurbanians 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 broad, and very quickly I recognized

...