we have a panel of three discussions today and i will introduce them in turn so keith gesson is a professor at the columbia school of journalism here at the morningside heights. steve kotkin is a professor of history and international affairs at princeton university and vicki. maria is a professor of political science at columbia and is also serving as director for the institute of latin american studies. so without further ado i will hand it over to tim who's going to talk a bit about his book before the other commentators chime. great. thanks a lot. it's really a pleasure to be here. and i want to thank the organizers and the panelists for taking time out of their busy schedules particularly during a pandemic. so i really appreciate your efforts and i look forward to having hearing what you have to say about the book. so the simplest way to describe week strong man the limits of power and putin's rushes that it's an explainer book it translates what i think is the best academic research on russia over the last decade for a general audience on a host of interesting questions is putin reall