After the outbreak of World War II and the invasion of France the Pozners fled Paris in the fall of 1940, traveling via Marseille in the Free Zone, Madrid, Barcelona, and Lisbon, before sailing back to the US.

[6] Robert Hollander, an elementary school friend of Pozner, remembered him most vividly for "his capacities for, one, having extraordinarily attractive fantasies and, two, for getting the rest of us to believe them.

"[7] In 1946, with the advent of what later came to be called McCarthyism, Pozner senior began to have serious problems with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, because of his pro-Soviet views and alleged cooperation with the Soviet intelligence services.

The documents that conclusively proved the secret service connections of his father were published in 1996 in the United States, as part of the Venona project files.

[7] Currently he tells of attending a Russian military-style high school in Berlin run by the Soviet Military Administration during that time.

[10] In 1953 the younger Pozner enrolled at Moscow State University, Faculty of Biology and Soil Science, majoring in human physiology.

In his Western media appearances Pozner was a charismatic and articulate apologist for some of the Soviet Union's most controversial foreign and domestic policy decisions.

However, while stopping short of unequivocal endorsement and support, he nevertheless rationalized, among other events, the arrest and exiling of Andrei Sakharov, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, in his 1990 autobiography Parting with Illusions.

[citation needed] In a 2005 interview with NPR's On the Media, Pozner spoke openly about his role as a Soviet spokesman, stating bluntly, "What I was doing was propaganda."

[15] Despite his frequent appearances in the North American media and his near-celebrity status there as the principal spokesman for the Soviet Union, Pozner remained virtually unknown at home.

[17] The programs marked a dramatic turning point in Pozner's career, garnering him instant renown and wide popularity and acclaim from domestic audiences in the USSR.

[18] He was promoted to the position of "political observer of Central Television", the highest journalistic rank at Gosteleradio, and started to work on programs that were broadcast domestically.

[21] For many years during the Cold War, Pozner delivered the nightly "Radio Moscow News and Commentary" program on the North America Service with his signature greeting, "Thank you and good evening".

[22] Pozner and Urgant also collaborated on a number of subsequent projects: Tour de France, Their Italy, German Conundrum, England Generally and Particularly, and Jewish Happiness, broadcast in 2010, 2012, 2013, 2015, and 2016 respectively.

[28] Around the time of his divorce, Pozner met Yekaterina Orlova, who would become his second wife, while they were both working for the Novosti Press Agency's Sputnik magazine.

Much to Pozner's amusement this also technically invalidated, among other things, his membership in the CPSU, his marriage and divorce, his residency permit (propiska), and his rank of lieutenant in the reserves.

[37][38][39] He credits the expansion of NATO since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the post-cold war strategy, and the subsequent lack of attention to specific Russian diplomatic overtures for the creation of Vladimir Putin.

[40] In April 2021, Pozner was forced to cut his birthday celebration short and flee Georgia after his hotel was blockaded by protesters calling him a "Kremlin propagandist".

Garibashvili blamed the National Movement and its supporters for the incident, calling the protests "actions that violated civilized norms and Georgian standards".