I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Tuesday, April 5th.

As you've been hearing on the news yesterday and today, perhaps the greatest moral horror of Putin's atrocity-filled war in Ukraine has been

revealed in the city of Boucha. As videos have emerged of civilian corpses, many with their

hands tied behind their backs indicating execution-style killings, and as reports are documenting

150 to 300 bodies discovered now in mass graves,

those victims having sometimes been shot in the backs of their heads,

and the bodies sometimes partially burned.

This is all leading to new pressure to help Ukraine more militarily as well as economically

and to not make territorial compromises so it doesn't look like

these kinds of war crimes bring results. President Biden yesterday said this. You'll hear

helicopter noise and wind in the background, but I think you can make out the words.

You may remember I got criticized for calling Putin a war criminal. Well, the truth of the matter,

just saw what happened to Rufi. This warrants him, he is a war criminal. But we have to gather

the information. We have to continue to provide Ukraine with the weapons they need to continue

to fight. And we have to gather all the detail so this can be an actual,

have a war crime trial. This guy is brutal, and what's happening in the Buka is outrageous.

Outrageous, no doubt. But what does that mean the U.S. or other countries should do?

U.S. military intervention often makes things worse.

There's a fascinating article in Foreign Affairs magazine right now by its former editor, Gideon

Rose, who is also author of the excellent book How Wars End. Maybe you heard him on the media this

weekend. He says, even as atrocities of civilians

mount, Putin has failed to accomplish his main goals in Ukraine for reasons very similar to why

...