You're listening to a podcast from Blogging Heads TV.

Hi, Marlene.

Hi, Bob.

How are you?

I'm good.

Thank you.

Good.

I can't complain.

Let me introduce us.

I'm Robert Wright.

This is the Right show.

Available on both streaming video and the audio podcast.

You are Marlene Laurel. You are at George Washington University. More specifically, you are,

let's get the title right. Your director, you're director of a number of things. I'm just going to mention one.

You're director of the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at Gw's Elliott School for International Relations. You've

written a number or international affairs, sorry, you've written a number of books, including,

I guess most recently one called is Russia Fascist, unraveling propaganda, east and west.

Also one called Russian nationalism.

We're certainly going to talk about both fascism and nationalism in the course of this.

I wanted to start out by asking you something about the kind of the psychology surrounding the Ukraine war.

When Putin launched it, he said one of the goals was the denotification of Ukraine.

And I think that caught a lot of Americans by surprise. They hadn't thought of Ukraine. And I think that caught a lot of Americans by surprise. They hadn't thought of Ukraine

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