Hello and welcome to the 538 Politics Podcast.

I'm Galen Druke and we've got a lot to cover today.

So first and foremost, thanks to Chad Matlin for filling in for me last week.

I know I picked quite the week to be on vacation.

Maybe think of today's podcast as a series of emergency podcasts catching up on everything

I missed while I was away.

We'll start with Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Four days in, Ukraine has kept Russian forces out of major population centers, but the situation

is in flux and it's unclear how far Russia may go to escalate the invasion.

More than half a million Ukrainian refugees have already fled the country and that number

is expected to continue to grow.

Much of the world has levied economic sanctions against Russia and the Russian rubble and

financial markets are now under serious stress.

Western countries have also increasingly pledged military aid to Ukraine.

To better understand the politics at play, we'll first look at how all of this is being

processed here at home.

What do Americans think about Biden's handling of Russia's aggression and what kinds of interventions

are they willing to support?

We'll also discuss how the GOP is reacting given that some Republican leaders, including

former President Trump, seem to be out of step with Republican voters.

Here in the show we'll broaden our scope and speak with an expert on Russia and former

Soviet states about how we got to this point and what could be done to ease the conflict.

...