In this episode, Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective members Jeannette Graulau and Corinna Mullin are joined by Arto Artinian for a wide-ranging discussion on the US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine, drawing on a recent AISC-convened roundtable and special issue edited by Jeannette Graulau on "Russia Today."

At a moment when Russophobia dominates mainstream discourse and critical scholarship is increasingly marginalized within Western academia, the conversation works to restore historical and political clarity. Situating the war within the longer arc of Western encirclement, sanctions warfare, and attempts to recolonize the post-Soviet space, the discussion challenges dominant narratives that frame Russia as an imperialist aggressor.

Arto Artinian is a musician and political theorist whose work focuses on Marxism, imperialism, and Eastern European political thought. Raised in Bulgaria and the Soviet Union, he later pursued his studies in the United States. His current research includes Homo Datum, an examination of political subjectivity under contemporary capitalism, and June 1941: Soviet Ukraine, a historico-philosophical reconstruction challenging revisionist accounts of the Nazi invasion. He is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Borough of Manhattan Community College (CUNY) and a member of the editorial collectives of Marxism & Sciences and Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination.

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