Hey there, folks. I'm Scott R. Anderson, senior editor and host of the Rational Security podcast here at Lawfare.

I spend most of my time here at Lawfare on pretty serious stuff, foreign relations, the use of military force, economic sanctions, that sort of thing.

Today, I want to talk to you about something else serious, how to keep our work at Lawfare going strong during this incredibly important time.

I'm proud of the work we do, providing

in-depth, non-partisan analysis of the hard national security questions facing policymakers and the

public alike. I was a lawfare reader and listener long before I became a member of the team,

and it's the sort of work I relied on when I was in government and the sort of analysis I need today

as I try to make sense of the things happening in the world.

But none of it happens for free. Lawfare is a nonprofit. We don't have paywalls. We always keep our content publicly available. We rely on our readers and listeners to keep this work going. So please

consider supporting us by heading over to www.lawfairmedia.org and becoming a supporter.

Whether it's $5, $10, or whatever works for you, it makes a real difference.

Plus, you'll help us continue to offer all our content for free to everyone.

Thanks for listening and for caring about the things that matter.

Now, back to the show.

It was a great chilly morning in April of 2022.

49 days after Russian forces invaded my country.

I was in Boucha, a suburb near Kiev that had been liberated from Russia just two weeks prior.

This cozy town used to be the go-to spot for young families who couldn't afford to live in the capital. But by April, those families were long gone. What remained were their destroyed homes,

and streets littered with buddies of civilians who were tortured and killed by the Russian army.

On that dark morning in Boucher, I stood in a sea of mostly foreign reporters,

who were crowding around, chatting, competing over the best angles.

Their cameras clicked again and again, taking shots of men in white uniforms,

...