I'm John Batchel with Bill Roger, my colleague and co-host, and we're very pleased to be speaking

again to the generous John Hardy, the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, watching Ukraine

conflict.

We've been talking fog of diplomacy.

Now we've switched to fog of war.

We've talked about the sliver of Kersk salient,

the moment of Belgarod salient, if it exists, and the frozen battlefields along the

Luhansk and Dinesk. Any significant change in a week, John,

where the Kremlin was taking advantage of the maybe a ceasefire,

maybe not a ceasefire.

It hasn't been any fundamental changes on the battlefield

and feeling kind of like a broken record

because that's the update pretty much every time we speak, i think that's that's kind of reflects the fairly slow pace of Russian progress

one thing that is worth mentioning is that the Russians have claimed to have finished

pushing Ukrainians out of Kerskoblast i think really in in practice, the fighting in here has, the active phase of this

operation was really over in March after Ukraine withdrew for most of the salient in the region.

But as you said, the two sides have been fighting over kind of a sliver of territory near the border.

The Russians now claim to have completed, ret know, retaking the rest of that.

Ukrainians say they still hold it a small part, you know, not sure exactly what's true.

But one thing that was significant is you saw both Moscow and Pyongyang for the first time

officially acknowledging that North Korean forces took part in that counteroffensive.

You know, it seemed to me that their statements kind of reflected like a finality that could

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