Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org. I'm Ian Masters,

and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the

news. We'll begin with today's prisoner swap with Russia. That involved an exchange which took

place at an airport in Ankara, Turkey, with 24 prisoners imprisoned in seven different countries,

including the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gerskovich and Paul Whelan, a former

U.S. Marine arrested in

2018, along with Russian dissidents Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Katamusa.

Joining us to discuss how innocent hostages are exchanged for Putin's spies, criminals and hackers,

is Ogun Lautman, a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for European

Policy Analysis, who is also the creator and co-host of the Kremlin File podcast series,

which features expert discussions on the Kremlin's internal affairs, global operations, and

tactics used from their hybrid warfare toolkit to destabilize Western democracies.

She has a Substance newsletter covering Russia, Ukraine, eastern and central Europe,

with a focus on Russia's intelligence operations available at Olga Lartman.substack.com.

Then we'd examine the possibility of a wider war in the Middle East,

with Iran's supreme leader bowing revenge for the assassination of the Hamas political leader in a reverberary guard called guesthouse in Tehran.

Joining us is Adam Weinstein, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute's responsible statecraft, a former Marine deployed to Afghanistan.

He previously worked as a senior law and policy analyst at the National Iranian American Council,

and we'll discuss his article at the nation, will Israel drag the U.S. into a new forever war.

Then finally we'll get a profile on Governor Tim Wals of Minnesota,

who is among the contenders for Vice President on the surging Harris for President

Ticket.

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