Inside the Kremlin: Reporting Power, Propaganda, and Putin

At the height of the Cold War, as a high school freshman, CNN’s Jill Dougherty developed an obsession with Russia. Over the next half-century, she studied in Leningrad, traveled across the Soviet Union, lived in Moscow, and reported on the presidencies of Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Vladimir Putin. Jill’s life, and Putin’s, intersected. They studied at the same Russian university; Jill was named CNN Moscow Bureau Chief just as Putin began his rise to power. She knew he was a former KGB officer, but she also believed he was an economic reformer. As Putin tightened his grip on the media, she changed her mind. In 2022, reporting from Moscow as Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, she was convinced the leader with whom she once had sympathized was a tyrant threatening to destroy a country she had come to love.

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She served as CNN’s Moscow Bureau Chief for almost a decade. She reported on the presidencies of Boris Yeltin and Vladimir Putin, as well as the political career of Mikhail Gorbachev, the first – and last – Soviet president. She covered a number of seminal events in modern Russia, including the collapse of the Soviet Union; the coup against Gorbachev; Ukraine’s Orange Revolution and Maidan Revolution of Dignity; Georgia’s Rose Revolution; Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Dougherty served as CNN White House correspondent for six years, covering the presidencies of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. As Foreign Affairs Correspondent she reported from the U.S. State Department. She served as U.S. Affairs Editor, reporting from Washington, DC. Based in Hong Kong, she was Managing Editor CNN International, Asia-Pacific, in charge of sevenbureaus across the region.

She currently is a CNN on-air contributor, commenting on Russia-related issues; Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies; Distinguished Fellow at The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; and Fellow at the Kennan Institute. She has pursued research on Russia and the media as a fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government; at the Woodrow Wilson Center; and at the International Centre for Defense and Security in Tallinn, Estonia.

Dougherty received her B.A. degree in Slavic Languages and Literature from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and her M.A. from Georgetown University, where she researched Russia’s soft power diplomacy.

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