I am certain that Putin is suffering from a lot of insomnia worrying about how to persuade his

inner circle and all of the guys with various degrees of force and capability that they need to do what he says

and get in line and be loyal and they need to not be thinking about how to do this right

the next time. Does Vladimir Putin's hold on power now look stronger or weaker? On last

week's podcast we had a conversation with Richard Fontaine in which he laid out

why he thought that after the Wagner Putch now halted

Putin actually looked stronger does he well our guest today Fred Fred Kagan, disagrees.

I was checking in with Fred, and he laid out why he thought

there were real cracks in the Kremlin right now

based on the Wagner mutiny.

So where does the Ukraine war head now in light of these possible cracks and what is actually happening with the Ukraine counter-offensive?

To answer these questions and others,

Fred Kagan called called me back.

As listeners to this podcast know, Fred is a regular on these conversations.

He's the director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute.

He's also working closely with the Russia team at the

Institute for the Study of War. By the way, the Institute for the Study of War has almost daily

analyses that they distribute that I highly recommend in terms of what's happening in the Russia-Ukraine war.

Fred is a former professor of military history at the US Military Academy at West Point,

and he completed his PhD in Soviet and Russian military history at Yale

University. He is a fluent Russian speaker and he has a range of sources

throughout the Ukraine and Russia. Putin, Progosian, cracks in the Kremlin, counter-offensive from Ukraine, this is call me back.

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