About Public Sphere
Public Sphere is a newsletter for people trying to make sense of this current moment of democratic decline — and not just in the context of Donald Trump. As a journalist with reporting experience, historical knowledge, and language skills in Russia and Eastern Europe, I look to the region as a possible warning of how democracies can fall sometimes swiftly and sometimes imperceptibly. Since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, I have traveled back and forth from Ukraine and have reported stories here before they appeared in U.S. news outlets.
I also have interviewed journalists, authors, former officials, and politicians for the newsletter, including Eugene Finkel, Amb. John Sullivan, Julia Sonnevend, Elle Reeve, Laura Beers, Isaac Arnsdorf, Timothy Ryback, Byron Tau, Zoë Schiffer, Tina Nguyen, Daniel Ziblatt, Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, Susan Neiman, Jeffrey Toobin, Dr. Ian Garner, Zsuzsanna Szelényi, Robert Draper, Michael Beckley, Josh Chin and Liza Lin, Tim Miller, Marie Yovanovitch, Rep. Peter Meijer, Casey Michel, Rep. Ruben Gallego, Tim Mak, Samantha Rose Hill, Dr. Fiona Hill, Spencer Ackerman, Sheera Frenkel, and Hana Meihan Davis.
About Luke Johnson
I’m a Berlin-based journalist. I cover politics, media, and society in Central and Eastern Europe, primarily focusing on the War in Ukraine and its regional effects.
Having covered the region for over a decade, I’ve interviewed public figures like Alexei Navalny, profiled imprisoned writers and artists, and covered democracies on the brink of authoritarianism. In reporting on Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I’ve focused on telling the stories of civilians and soldiers in war. My reporting and analysis has been published by The New Republic, Foreign Policy, Columbia Journalism Review, Internationale Politik Quarterly, The Washington Post, The Parliament Magazine, Fortune, The Daily Beast, and many other outlets.
