Hi everybody Aaron Stein here, Chief Content Officer at War on the Rocks and what follows is the first 20 minutes of a conversation I had with Mike last week about the latest from the Ukrainian offensive and where we touched on conversations is wide-ranging

is Russian nuclear doctrine and even a little bit of Russian history. So head on over to

www that War on the Rocks.com slash membership where you can sign up to listen to the entire episode.

Hello and welcome to the Russia contingency where I am not Michael Coffman.

I am Aaron Stein, chief content officer at War on the Rocks and I am joined today by Michael Coffin.

Mike, it's good to have on the show.

Hey, thanks for hosting.

The offensive has been ongoing and I think a lot of listeners have been wondering where

you are.

There's been some travel and some logistics issues so since the last time I

think you spoke with Nick what is your assessment of the Ukrainian offensive?

Sure so I think it's fair to say we're a little bit over a month into this offensive at this point.

And at this stage, just to kind of lay down a brief scene setter,

like defensive continues along three principles. to kind of lay down a brief scene setter.

Like the offensive continues along three principal axis of advance.

That's Bahmut, the echinavasilco pushing south and southern Danetsk.

And several pushes coming down from O'Richa. South and

Southern Danetz and several pushes coming down from Oryhiv on what generally is referred to as a

tuckmock access or thereabouts that is the main lines of Russian defenses and

the the the sort of forward defenses or the forward defenses or securities all ahead of them

that is north of Takmach.

Okay, at this stage, I think it's fair to say that Ukraine has made incremental

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