Stanchev, Michael: - Yuri Felshtinsky is an expert on the Russian secret service with close ties to leading defectors. He co-authored bestsellers Blowing up Russia with KGB Lt-Col Alexander Litvinenko-who was assassinated on Vladimir Putin's orders according to the findings of a 2015 UK Inquiry-and The Age of Assassins: How Putin Poisons Elections. He was a Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and, in Ukraine, he led the project to decode the infamous 'Kuchma tapes' connected to the assassination of a leading journalist in Ukraine. He appears regularly as news commentator on MSNBC, NPR, BBC and Sky TV. Michael Stanchev is Professor of History and Head of the History Department at Kharkiv Karazin University, Ukraine, and was an advisor to the Ukraine Foreign Office. He is an Academician of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and has lectured in the United States, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan. He lives in Kharkiv with his family.