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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics,

life and culture. My name is Freddie Gray. I'm the deputy editor of The Spectator.

On this edition of the Americano podcast, we're going to do something a little bit different.

We're going to listen to a conversation between one of our contributing editors, Paul Wood,

and Fiona Hill, who is currently at the Brookings Institute and is a former official

at the US National Security Council. And they're going to be talking about the war in Ukraine,

Vladimir Putin and President Joe Biden.

And this week is a joint production with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, the IWPR,

which is a non-profit organisation supporting local journalists in the Caucasus, Central Asia,

Iraq, the Balkans and most notably Ukraine. I know they've just sent 50 flag jackets to Ukraine

for journalists there to use. It's the IWPR's annual meeting and they've invited a former trustee, Dr Fiona Hill,

to speak to the meeting. Dr Hill, you may remember, gave evidence against Donald Trump at his

first impeachment hearing. She was able to do that because she had been for a time his director

for Russia on the National Security Council. She is well known in academic circles having made a study

of Russia and in particular of Vladimir Putin for many decades. She's now back at her usual home,

which is the Brookings Institution. I asked her, first of all, since she had predicted the invasion of

Ukraine, when many were saying that President Putin was bluffing, how she thought

the war would now end? Well, that is, of course, the question that everybody would know. If only

I had my crystal ball, I mean, I wish I had. I mean, none of the scenarios that I play out in my head

are particularly propitious or positive here, because there are many different ways that this could

...