Tony Kevin is a former Australian ambassador to Poland and Cambodia, and the author of Return to Moscow (2017). He served in Moscow from 1969 to 1971 and has returned to Russia several times since 2016.
Kevin joins us on a war he says Kiev has already lost, and that the West is still prolonging. The conversation runs from his Cold War posting and the decay of the Soviet system, through Maidan, Bandera’s afterlife in Ukrainian politics, the Donbass fighting from 2014, and the Minsk accords as a ceasefire that also bought time. It then turns on Russophobia in Australia and the wider West, Rocky IV and a century of invasion memory from Nevsky to Napoleon and Hitler, what a Russian-terms peace would require, and why he thinks economic self-interest is the only adult way out.
Podcast Details: 71 min | Released 7 October, 2026 | Tony Kevin – Former Australian ambassador to Poland and Cambodia; author of Return to Moscow; served in Moscow from 1969 to 1971 and has returned to Russia several times since 2016.
Support the Launch:Subscribe for free on
Substack at boganintel.com to get episodes and show notes, or go paid ($5/month).