In this video, Professor John Mearsheimer reflects on his recent trip to Russia and on conversations with members of the country’s foreign policy elite, including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. What did he actually observe in Moscow and St. Petersburg — and how does his impression compare with the picture often presented in the West?
Mearsheimer discusses everyday life in Russia, the state of the economy, the mood within the political leadership, and how the Russian elite now views the war in Ukraine, the West, and the prospects for negotiations. He also examines how Moscow sees the next phase of the war — and what kind of end to the conflict is still considered realistic in Russia.
This video was produced by John Mearsheimer and published on his YouTube channel on the 16th of September, 2026.
To read the transcript of the interview: Prof. Mearsheimer: The Russia I Saw
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John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982. He graduated from West Point in 1970 and then served five years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force. He then started graduate school in political science at Cornell University in 1975. He received his Ph.D. in 1980. He spent the 1979-1980 academic year as a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, and was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Center for International Affairs from 1980 to 1982. During the 1998-1999 academic year, he was the Whitney H. Shepardson Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
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