The League of Women Voters of Litchfield County invites you to their annual international luncheon. 

Tickets are $45.00. RSVP- lwvoflc [at] gmail.com or call 860-567-2723.

Send check to LWV of LC, Box 899, Litchfield, CT, 06759. RSVP by May 4th.

Guest speaker Dr. James Hatt reflects upon how and when, from a local bureaucrat in St. Petersburg to President of Russia, Putin has been insistent and clear that declarations of independent statehood by lands he considers inherently Russian, resulted from the actions of a malevolent America. Since the Chechen war of 1999, Western powers vacillated between willful ignorance and timid acceptance of Putin’s Kremlin, generating a momentum of inevitability to now, the second invasion of Ukraine since 2014.

An English Barrister, Hatt joined the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and was assigned to Cable and Wireless PLC, one of three companies privatized by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. In 1989 Hatt went into Gorbachev’s USSR and negotiated the first agreements on Soviet/European communications. He stayed throughout the Yeltsin era. In 1990, during his first visit to St. Petersburg, he met Vladimir Putin, then advisor on international affairs to Mayor Sobchak. Over the next 25 years, he had numerous interactions with Putin and his advisors.