Welcome to the Bullwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sacks. There's a lot going on today, but I feel

we've been remiss by not talking about what's been going on in Ukraine more often. So we are

extremely lucky today to be joined by Admiral James Davretis, who is a retired four-star

naval officer. He is a former NATO Supreme Allied commander. And his latest book is

To Risk at All, Nine Conflicts in the Crucible of Decision. He is a columnist for Bloomberg,

former Dean at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Admiral, thank you

so much for joining us this morning. It's my pleasure, Charlie. So let's start off with the most important

question. How is the war going? Is Ukraine winning this war? Are we headed for a stalemate?

What is your read right now? To answer the question, I think you've got to begin with

Russia's objectives. So let's turn the clock back about five months. Putin invades. He tells his

BFF, best friend forever, President Xi, that hey, this thing will be over in three or four days,

five at the most. We are headed into month six. Russia's objective was to take the entire country,

decapitate the Zelensky regime, probably literally, and completely control this vast nation,

the size of Texas, grab all its resources, pull it into the Russian orbit. By any measure,

he has failed. And he has failed badly. So that brings us immediately to the present. He still

holds on to 15% of the country that he controlled since the 2014 invasion, including most notably Crimea.

The only thing he's been able to add to that suite of stolen land, if you will, is about five percent.

So today he sits on about 20% total of Ukraine. I would call that a failure, but it begs the

question, Charlie, what happens next? And I think here, despite all of the immense and I think

very successful efforts to arm the Ukrainians, despite their extraordinary fighting spirit, despite

the remarkable leadership of Vladimir Zelensky, in spite of all that, I think it's very difficult

militarily to envision a scenario in which the Ukrainians can literally push the Russians out of

...