Welcome to Beg to Beg to Differ.

The Bull Works Weekly Roundtable discussion featuring civil conversation across the political spectrum.

We range from center left to center right.

I'm Mona Charon, indicated columnist and policy editor of the Bullwork, and I'm joined

by our regulars. Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution in the Wall Street Journal,

Linda Chavez of the Nisk Cannon Center,

and Damon Linker, who writes the Substack newsletter,

Eyes on the Right.

Our special guest this week is Ambassador Eric Edelman,

former Ambassador to Finland and Turkey, and former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.

Welcome, one and all.

I want to stress that this podcast is called Begg to Differ, and we do differ sometimes.

And in fact, we may differ when we come to the topic of whether or not

the Justice Department should pursue criminal charges against Donald Trump.

But before we get to those we have a couple of other things to cover which may involve

thunderous agreement.

So let's find out.

First topic is the Ukraine war is now six months old. And I'm going to turn to you, Eric Adelman, on this.

Russia now controls about 20% of Ukraine's territory.

And I want to ask you, first off, who would have predicted six months ago

when we first heard the news, February 24th, that Russia was indeed invading, that we would

be where we are now.

...