At the height of the Cold War during her freshman year of high school, CNN’s Jill Dougherty developed an obsession with Russia. Over the next half-century, she studied in Leningrad, traveled the Soviet Union as part of a cultural exchange program, lived in Moscow, and reported on the presidencies of Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Vladimir Putin.

Jill’s life is intertwined with Putin’s in interesting ways. They are the same age and share an alma mater. Jill took the position of CNN Moscow Bureau Chief at the same time Putin ascended to Prime Minister and then President. She at first believed him to be primarily an economic reformer, the Western-oriented leader Russia needed. For years she defended him to colleagues and friends, insisting that foreign critics misunderstood his post-Soviet point of view. But as Putin used his growing power to strangle the nation’s independent press, her feelings began to change. When she reported live on the ground to millions of CNN viewers around the world as Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine in 2022, she realized the leader with whom she had sympathized was a tyrant threatening to destroy a place and a people she had come to love.

Russia is a memoir that traces Jill’s fascination with Russia and shares the insights into the country, its people, and its leader she has gleaned through forty years of reporting. Readers will see Russia’s evolution through the eyes of the dedicated, compassionate, cancer-surviving, gay woman they have watched on cable since 1983.