Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome back to Conversations.

I'm pleased to be joined again today. Again, because these conversations with him are always so valuable with

by Eric Edgelman, a counselor at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments,

a professor at Johns Hopkins, Syse here in Washington, but more importantly for our purposes,

someone who served with distinction at very high levels of the State Department,

the Defense Department, the White House, his story in as well. So, someone who's really terrific

at giving us a big picture, but also with proper attention to details of what's happening in the

world. So, I thought we should talk again about Ukraine, Eric. We talked on March 1st and

that conversation I look back at it stands up quite well actually, but we should talk about how things

have changed, right? Well, when we talked at the outset, it was clear that Putin's plan to

launch a decapitation strike to exercise regime change very quickly and brutally in Ukraine

was failing. And so, it was a kind of optimistic moment. And, you know, here we are three months

later, and the Ukrainians are still fighting. Ukraine is still standing, and the Russian

military is in some trouble. But the, I think, long-term prognosis is a little murkier.

Okay, so let's go through that. We were both inspired. That was a week into the war we spoke,

and Ukraine had been clear that the initial Russian thrust seemed to have failed to decapitate

the regime, and Zelensky and the Ukrainians were fighting courageously and impressively,

obviously. And we were hopeful, I think, concerned about what might happen though over the

medium and long-term. So, here we are, what, three and a half months later. So, what should

you let's go through sort of the military situation perhaps, and what we're doing there,

but most of what they're doing, and then diplomacy, and then economics let's talk about. So,

what's your, where's your read? We're speaking on, what is it June 22nd? Where are we sort of

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