You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on Strategy, Defense and Foreign Affairs. My name is Ryan Evans, CEO of Warren the Rocks.

I'm sitting here with Michael Kaufman of CNA, the head of their Russia team.

Those of you who Reed Worn the Rocks

are very familiar with his work.

A lot of you have probably started following them on Twitter

if you haven't already in the last few days

as Russia has invaded Ukraine and we're really just going to have a

short conversation we were just out having a conversation about how things are going

and and how people are interpreting this war and we thought it might be a useful exercise

to discuss how we can know how the war is going for both Ukraine and Russia,

what Russia was trying to do where it's fallen short, and what the prospects

look like for Ukraine in the near future.

So Mike, thanks for joining the show.

Yeah, thanks for having me on your program.

So Mike, there's a lot of optimism,

which I sort of share in every time you see,

you know, we see the Ukrainians resisting, which is encouraging.

But you were an early voice predicting

that Russia actually would invade and that this was not a bluff.

But I think it's safe to say that you were, along with a lot of other analysts, befuddled by the way that Putin's war played out in the first couple of days and the way that the

military enacted its plan to invade Ukraine. What is your interpretation of what's

happened over the last few days? Sure, that's a great question. So I think we got the political objectives of the war very much right,

...