CNN Journalist Jill Dougherty on Russia and Her New Book Russia Up Close

Legendary CNN journalist Jill Doherty has a blunt warning for anyone who believes Kremlin propaganda without knowing what life in Russia is actually like, Boulevard Bulgaria reported on Saturday: go and see it with your own eyes.

Doherty knows Russia intimately from decades on the ground, a journey she captures in her memoir Russia Up Close, which is arriving in Bulgarian translation as part of the Power and Responsibility series published by Ciela and curated by Svylan Spasov, as reported by Kafene.bg.

Doherty spent three decades as a CNN correspondent, serving as Moscow bureau chief during the Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies, traveling across the Soviet Union as a student in the 1960s and 1970s, and witnessing the collapse of communism, the Yeltsin era, and the rise of Vladimir Putin, Kafene.bg reported.

Doherty told Boulevard Bulgaria that she initially used the term “russophile” to describe her deep attraction to Russian language and literature, but over the years she realized that culture was far more complex and encompassed Ukrainian and Caucasian influences rather than being purely Russian.

Kafene.bg said that the memoir traces her evolution from youthful enthusiasm during the Cold War to witnessing the systematic dismantling of democratic hopes under Putin’s administration.

Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine ended Doherty’s ability to return to the country, and she stated to Boulevard Bulgaria that she will not go back as long as Putin remains in power.

Now a university lecturer, Doherty studies young Russians who have known no other leader, telling Boulevard Bulgaria that Putin manipulates their basic grievances by falsely claiming that Europe hates and rejects them.

“Putin knows human character very well,” Doherty told Boulevard Bulgaria, describing how the Russian leader exploits feelings of isolation and resentment to manufacture a sense of civilizational uniqueness.

While she once saw strong potential for a liberal, travel-friendly generation of young Russians eager for normal European integration, Doherty told Boulevard Bulgaria that those hopes have dimmed significantly as wartime repression intensifies and dissenters face arrest.

Doherty also addressed the Kremlin’s deployment of traditional values and the Russian Orthodox Church, telling Boulevard Bulgaria that the church’s support for the war against a fellow Orthodox Christian nation represents a glaring contradiction driven by historical identification with state power.

“As for traditional values—this is an absurdity,” Doherty told Boulevard Bulgaria, characterizing the rhetoric as a deliberate political technology designed to paint Europe as morally corrupt.

Boulevard Bulgaria said that Doherty’s book launch in Sofia aims to unpack these mechanisms of soft power, religious instrumentalization, and historical nostalgia that continue to resonate across Eastern Europe.