In this episode, Dmitri Alperovitch talks with historian and Russia expert Mark Galeotti about:

- Whether Putin is capable of compromising his war aims in any potential future negotiations with Ukraine

- The real reason for why he chose to invade Ukraine

- Why he went ahead and annexed territories he didn't even have full control over

- The similarities between Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022

- Why Prigozhin and Kadyrov are no threat to Putin's hold on power

- Whether the sanctions and export controls are having much of an effect on the Russian economy and society

- How the people in Russia's intelligence services are reacting to the war (and what happened to SVR's Naryshkin)

- Why Putin is incapable of holding incompetent leaders accountable

- Why the bombastic rhetoric from Russian nationalist shock jocks on state television is not a portal into Kremlin's policy

- And much more!

Why has Russia been unable to suppress Ukrainian air defenses? What is the true state of its missile stockpiles and production rates? Is the F-16 the best aircraft to provide to Ukraine to replace its old Soviet fighter jets? How can the West disrupt the chips supplies for the Russian military?

Dmitri Alperovitch talks to Justin Brock and Dr. Jack Watling from Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) about their findings from the recent trip to Ukraine

What lessons should Taiwan and its allies draw from the current conflict in Ukraine? Is the tank obsolete? Are commercial drones the future of warfare?

Dmitri Alperovitch speaks to Franz-Stefan Gady, a research fellow at IISS and a deep thinker on the future of conflict and war, about his recent trip to Ukraine and the non-obvious lessons for Taiwan from this conflict

Dmitri Alperovitch talks with Michael Kofman, who is just back from a trip to Ukraine.

They discuss:

- The latest on the fight in Kherson and Luhansk

- Impact of Russian terror strikes on civilian infrastructure

- Ukrainian morale

- How Putin's mobilization is progressing

- What the Russians are trying to achieve with the dirty bomb scares, - Lkelihood of use of nuclear weapons and

- How this war might end

In the latest episode, Dmitri Alperovitch talks with Michael Kofman about the Kerch bridge attack, as well as:

- Prospect of nuclear weapons use by Putin

- Analysis of how Russia's mobilization drive has gone thus far

- Kherson and Donbas counteroffensives by Ukrainian forces

- Why the Russians continue their pointless attacks in Donetsk oblasts

- Ongoing game of musical chairs taking place at the highest levels of Russian military hierarchy

- And the strange things happening with Starlink in Ukraine

- Where the war is heading in 2023

How did the Russian northern front collapse so rapidly and what can be expected now in the fight for Donbas and Kherson?

Dmitri Alperovitch discusses the latest Ukraine counteroffensive developments with Sergii Grabskyi, a Reserve Colonel in the Ukrainian military.