From Russia’s war in Chechnya to the consolidation of President Putin’s “managed democracy” -

from Ukraine’s Orange Revolution to, more recently, the “swerving front line” in the Donbass region – for many years, Mark MacKinnon (BJ ’97) of the Globe and Mail has kept Canadians informed on major developments in Russia and Ukraine.

In a wide-ranging conversation with journalism professor Allan Thompson, MacKinnon spoke of the many challenges he’s faced over the years while reporting from those areas of the world.

On Journalism

On Russia and Ukraine

On Russia and the U.S.

Vlad’s story

Questions from the floor: Part I

Questions from the floor: Part II

Mark MacKinnon is currently based in London, where he is The Globe and Mail’s Senior International Correspondent. In that posting he has reported on the Syrian refugee crisis, the rise of Islamic State, the war in eastern Ukraine and Scotland’s independence referendum.

He spent five years as the newspaper’s Beijing correspondent, and has also been posted to the Middle East and Moscow for the Globe. He has covered the arrival of Canada’s troops in Afghanistan, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Russia’s war in Chechnya, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah conflict.

A six-time National Newspaper Award winner, Mark was also named the NNA’s Print Journalist of the Year (2016) for Canada.

He is the author of The New Cold War: Revolutions, Rigged Elections and Pipeline Politics – which was published in 2007 by Random House – and The China Diaries, an e-book of his train travels through the Middle Kingdom along with photographer John Lehmann.

He’s also a proud graduate of Carleton’s Bachelor of Journalism program. _________________________________________________________

Allan Thompson is an Associate Professor at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication. He joined thefaculty at Carleton in 2003 after spending 17 years as a reporter with the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest circulation daily newspaper. He worked for ten years as a correspondent for The Star on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, reporting on foreign affairs, defence and immigration issues.

In early 2006 he launched the Rwanda Initiative, a five-year partnership between Carleton’s journalism school and its counterpart in Rwanda. The project sent more than 175 Canadians to Rwanda as teachers, trainers and media interns and also brought Rwandan journalists to Canada to study.

He is the editor of The Media and the Rwanda Genocide and co-author of The Canadian Reporter, the standard journalism text for Canadian journalism students. He is also the founding director of Carleton’s Centre for Media and Transitional Societies (CMTS). In 2015 he was the federal Liberal candidate in the southwestern Ontario riding of Huron-Bruce.

Reporting from Russia and Ukraine

was presented by the School of Journalism and Communication and the Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies on September 14, 2017

with support from the Faculty of Public Affairs and Carleton University Advancement