My newsletter is for people who want to be global citizens. Folks who care about what’s happening in the world, but need a guide (me) to break it down for them.
Each week, I will bring you content that helps all of us, no matter where you are in the world, feel more connected with your fellow human. I focus primarily on Ukraine but, as you will read, hear and watch, this newsletter will draw parallels between what’s happening here and the rest of the world.
As a Black American who lives in Kyiv and became known for my 2022 coverage of Russia’s invasion, many people cared about my journalism because they wanted to know why I cared so much. I am the only Black reporter they knew who was embedded with Ukrainian soldiers and helped refugees flee the country. The idea that a Black man who had no cultural roots here really drew wider, non-white audience that made people ask different questions about why they should care about what is happening here.
Are there Nazis in Ukraine?
Do Ukrainians like Black people?
What do they think about Palestine?
What started off as coverage devoted to Ukraine turned into wider conversations about how Ukraine fits in larger conversations of privilege in media coverage.
About me
I’m probably one of the few foreign affairs reporters who compares diplomacy to the narcotics trade. In fact, one of my most popular columns compared Russian President Vladimir Putin to fictional drug lord Marlo Standfield on the HBO series The Wire.
Most importantly, I’m a very curious person whose personal growth is shaped by my travel experiences around the world. I’m the type of journalist who uses my personal experiences to tell stories audiences can relate to. It’s one of the reasons millions of people were drawn to my coverage of Ukraine in 2020 and why hundreds of thousands of them continue to follow my work, and me in general, on social media.
That’s always been my approach to storytelling: making things simple and relatable to the everyday person and being unafraid to lead with my heart, and my head.
My work focuses on U.S. domestic politics, racism in the U.S. and abroad, Eastern European affairs, and other foreign policy issues. Each week, I publish feature videos or podcasts on Terrell J Starr Official YouTube that focus on Ukraine, but have a wider world focus.
Essentially, I am a foreign affairs communicator who can take complex world events and help us all feel connected to them through memoir-style storytelling that taps into our own stories of living on this planet. I help connect people to each other.
My sixteen years in journalism includes stints as FUSION’s national political correspondent covering the 2016 presidential campaign. From 2017 to 2021 I served as The Root’s national political correspondent. Among the many notable interview subjects I interviewed while covering the 2020 presidential race and the 2018 midterm elections include political powerhouses Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren. Before that, I was a senior reporter at Foxtrot Alpha, a site that focuses on military, technology, and policy. I am also a contributor to Foreign Policy magazine, the Washington Post, Outrider Magazine and MSNBC.
I was in Kyiv when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in 2022 and my live, on-the-ground video stories for television networks such CNN, MSNBC, and Al Jazeera introduced my unique style of reporting to millions of people around the globe.
As a Peace Corps volunteer in Georgia from 2003 to 2005, I witnessed the Rose Revolution that peacefully ousted Eduard Shedverdnadze in favor of Mikhail Saakashvillli; I was also a Georgian language student in the capital of Tbilisi in 2008 when Russia invaded the country. I lived in Ukraine as a Fulbright fellow and a freelance journalist from 2009 to 2010, during which period I produced a photojournalism project on the lives of Black Ukrainians.
I have a master’s degree in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies where my work focused on the European Union’s integration of former communist states and a second master’s in Journalism from the University of Illinois. I earned a bachelor’s degree in English at Philander Smith College, a historically Black college in Little Rock, Arkansas.
While I am based in Brooklyn, New York, I spend much of my time in Ukraine and regularly travel to Central Asia and Western Europe for reporting assignments.
Why subscribe?
Because this is one of the few places where you will get foreign policy news that doesn’t sound like a dry-ass lecture at a Washington think tank. My newsletter is designed to help you better connect, on a personal level, with the subject I introduce to you.
You will get several types of content each week that doesn’t come from the typical white man’s view of the world, which is often privileged and disconnected from how marginalized peoples and people of color understand global affairs.
As a paid subscriber, you will get access to a monthly zoom call from me where I discuss my work in Ukraine and the news item of that week.
Equally important, you will be investing in independent journalism that is needed now more than ever. Mainstream media platforms are bland. None of the people tasked with helping us to understand the world do a particularly good job of it. My newsletter assumes that you do not need to be an “expert” to participate in the conversation.
I believe that foreign policy, in the most basic meaning, is all about how you want the world you live in to function. That’s it! What type of world do you want to live in? That is what I explore in my newsletter and you will learn more about yourself as you consume my journalism each week.
What type of relationship do you want with Ukraine or South Africa? Why should you care about Palestine? How does Trump’s tariff war hurt me personally? Why should my tax dollars go (name a country) and we have all of these issues at home. That is what I help you understand in my newsletter.
I meet you where you are? I don’t require you to meet me where I am.
That’s why you should subscribe
