Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.

I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with the upcoming Trump-Pooten summit next Friday in Alaska,

which is yet another sellout to Putin after Trump pretending to be annoyed with his handler,

who now gets another free pass with the deadline for secondary sanctions lifted

and a so-called peace deal, nothing more than a gift to Putin

and a betrayal of Ukraine. Joining us is Anders Aslan, a senior fellow at the Stockholm Free World

Forum, a professor at the Center for Eurasian Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University

and a former senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

A member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, he worked as a Swedish diplomat in Moscow

and served as an economic advisor to the governments of Russia and Ukraine.

His books include Ukraine, One Went Wrong and How to Fix It, and Russia's Crony Capitalism,

The Path from Market Economy to kleptocracy.

Then we'll get an appraisal of how Trump is setting up Zelensky,

whose constitution does not allow him to give up territory,

which means he will reject the phony peace offer,

and that will be Trump's excuse to abandon Ukraine and make it Europe's problem.

Joining us is Olga Loutman, 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 taxics use from their hybrid warfare toolkit to destabilize Western democracies.

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

...