May 13, 2026 | The CMC welcomed Mariana Budjeryn, a senior researcher with the Center for Nuclear Security Policy at MIT’s Security Studies Program, to present on the story of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant site and thoughts on how to mitigate risks to staff in such circumstances. She is currently funded by the Ukraine Team for Coordination to research the attacks into the Russian takeover of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant site.
She is the author of Inheriting the Bomb: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023) and a winner of the 2024 William E. Colby Military Writers’ Award, the first female in the award’s 25-year history.