On this special "Twosday," we had the fortune of welcoming back two special guests for a discussion centered on Russia and the Ukraine and all the potential reverberations from the current conflict. Our first guest is Dr. Angela Stent, Senior Fellow at Brookings and one of the world's leading specialists on the Former Soviet Union, Russia, and Russia's relations with the West. In our discussion, we reference her most recent book, "Putin's World: Russia Against the West and With the Rest." Our second guest is our longtime friend, Dr. Dan Yergin, Vice Chairman at IHS Markit and Chairman of CERAWeek. Dan is the author of a number of seminal books on energy and in our discussion we also touch on Dan's latest book, "The New Map."

Angela provided an excellent synopsis of how and why we got here to launch our conversation. My own personal summary would be an aggressive leader and an aggressive country sensed the time was now to press their agenda. We covered a whole range of important topics with Angela and Dan including Putin's potential master plan, what influenced Putin to start this, how Russia and China are increasingly working together, how this all effects the plans for energy transition, the impact of a potential Iran deal, why energy security is now firmly back on the table, and many other issues. In sum, Dan and Angela tag-teamed everything we threw their way and we came away much more informed. We are so grateful to visit with them both and appreciate them sharing their knowledge and expertise with us all!

As always, our Veriten team kicked off the show: Mike Bradley shared an update on weekly energy performance, upcoming earnings, and his observations on Iranian sanctions vs. OPEC spare capacity vs. crude oil price. Colin Fenton chimed in with a satellite-based count of current global crude oil stocks and freight rates, a snapshot of Chinese-Russian oil flows, and an overview of the current Chinese market economy to prepare us for our global conversation.