Hello and welcome to the latest podcast from the Centre for European Reform.

I'm Ian Bond, the CER's Deputy Director.

This week we're marking four years since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion

of Ukraine and 12 years since Russia began its campaign against Ukraine's sovereignty and

territorial integrity by sending so-called little green men into Crimea. In the last four years,

it's estimated that Russia has lost something like 1.2 million troops, killed,

missing in action or wounded and unlikely to return to the battlefield, and Ukraine's losses are

estimated to be up to half of that number. This has been a particularly brutal winter for Ukraine,

the coldest since the full-scale invasion began, and the one during which Russia's attacks on Ukraine's

heating and electricity infrastructure have been the most relentless and seemingly the most effective,

leaving the civilian population often freezing in the dark. The last year has also been a

difficult one for Ukraine on the international front.

Since taking office in January 2025, Donald Trump has consistently put more pressure on Ukraine

to make concessions than on Russia and has cut off most US military and financial aid to Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the coalition of the willing, which emerged in early 2025 and seemed briefly to offer some hope that European

forces would reinforce exhausted Ukrainian troops, has turned out to be unwilling to do much

until the war is over.

And yet somehow Ukraine fights on, even makes some gains on the battlefield in recent weeks,

and its civilian population endures and survives.

I hope that my guests today will give me a sense of how Ukraine is managing to hold out, what the military and economic

situation is, and what Ukraine's future prospects are. And I'm delighted to welcome Victoria

of Dovichenko, the joint leader of the Future of Ukraine program at Cambridge University's

...