Ukraine’s Past, Present, and Future

Описание: A conversation with The Wall Street Journal's Yaroslav Trofimov and Le Figaro's Margaux Benn, moderated by Renée Kaplan.

Filmed on 9/16/2025 with a live audience both in person and on Zoom.

Drawing from Trofimov’s frontline reporting and his acclaimed book Our Enemies Will Vanish, alongside Benn’s extensive international reporting, the discussion explores the realities of life under siege, the resilience of the Ukrainian people, and the global implications of the ongoing fight for democracy and sovereignty. This conversation was moderated by veteran journalist and Visiting Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford, Renée Kaplan.

About the speakers:

Yaroslav Trofimov is the author of three books of narrative non-fiction and one novel. He has worked around the world as a foreign correspondent of The Wall Street Journal since 1999, and has served as the newspaper’s chief foreign-affairs correspondent since 2018. Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting in 2023, for his work on Ukraine, and in 2022, for his work on Afghanistan, and won the National Press Club award for political analysis in 2024. His latest non-fiction book, Our Enemies Will Vanish, was a finalist of the 2024 Orwell Prize and won the 2024 Peterson Literary Prize. Yaroslav’s novel, No Country for Love, based on his family’s history in 20th century Ukraine, has been published in five languages, including French. Yaroslav holds an MA from New York University.

Margaux Benn is a senior reporter with Le Figaro and a documentary filmmaker. She has reported from a dozen countries, and lived in Sudan, Kenya, the Central African Republic, Cyprus and Afghanistan – a country which she has been covering for nearly a decade. Her work in Afghanistan and Ukraine has received several French and international awards, including the Albert Londres Prize and the Bayeux Prize for War Reporters. She is active in various initiatives to promote media literacy and is co-secretary general of France’s feminist journalists association Prenons la Une.

Renée Kaplan is a veteran journalist and news leader, with experience across public broadcasting, news networks, and legacy newspapers in France, the UK and the US. She is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford. Before joining the Institute, Kaplan was the Head of News for ARTE, and previously the Head of digital editorial development at the Financial Times.

Evenings with an Author is generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg.