I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Thursday, March 10th.

Fred Kaplan from Slate has been a guest on this show many times with lots of insight into world affairs,

but I don't think I've ever been as excited to have him on the show as I am right now.

With a leap of imagination and a grasp of reality,

Fred's new article actually describes a path to a negotiated settlement in the war in Ukraine,

when most people are just talking about how evil Putin's invasion is,

which of course it is. But now let's think the next thought. Fred Kaplan writes the column

War Stories for Slate and is the author of many books, including his latest, released in 2020,

which unfortunately feels very relevant right now, called the bomb, presidents, generals, and the secret

history of nuclear war. But his new article on Slate is simply called How to End the War in

Ukraine. Fred, thanks for coming on for this and thinking through a possible solution, not just

documenting the battles. So we'll get into your five-point peace plan, but just to establish your basic premise first,

from a real politics standpoint of what a settlement needs to look like,

you wrote, the deal has to give Putin something he can label as a victory,

but at the same time not reward Putin for the invasion.

Those sound mutually exclusive.

Are they not?

Well, they do sound mutually exclusive, but for example, let me give you one case.

One condition would be that Zelensky says that Ukraine will not join NATO. And there is a provision in the

amended Ukrainian constitution, which requires the government to seek NATO membership. So you just

get rid of that amendment. Now, is that a concession is that a victory

uh... the lansky has said just in the past few days that he's cooling

...