Mark Mackinnon led the foreign press corps in reporting on the Western efforts to undermine Vladimir Putin and the new hardline Kremlin as Moscow reasserted its influence across the former Soviet Union. He will examine not only Russia’s descent into authoritarianism under Putin, but the way that NATO and the West helped speed that process by treating the Kremlin as an adversary. Mark is currently the Middle East correspondent for Canada’s national newspaper, the Globe and Mail. Prior to 2005 he was the paper’s Moscow bureau chief. His book The New Cold War: Revolutions, Rigged Elections and Pipeline Politics in the Former Soviet Union was published by Carroll & Graf, in 2007