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Hi, and welcome back to Foreign Office. I'm Michael Weiss, Director of Special Investigations at the Free Russia Foundation and Senior Editor at Yahoo News.

This week, we're joined by Jenny Keverella. I have known her for a decade, I think, and weirdly, strangely, to my everlasting discredit have not had her on the show yet,

but she's a brilliant analyst at the Institute for the Study of War and National Security Fellow, I think, is the official title.

If you don't follow her and her team's work, they do daily assessments of the war in Ukraine.

Obviously, this is the reason I'm bringing Jenny on. Jenny, it's great to have you at long last.

Thanks very much for having me. It's a pleasure.

You guys are doing incredible stuff, particularly with map making and point elistically charting where we stand in 15-plus months of this Russian full-scale invasion.

Let's start very broadly, and generally, and maybe we can then zoom into some more localized issues and flashpoints.

Where is this war at the moment? To the outward observer, it would look like the fall of Bakmut, which seemed to be a very anticlimactic and muted affair for the Russians, much to their chagrin.

Apart from that, things have remained rather static, and everybody seems to be building anticipation for this forthcoming Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Have you noticed any changes along the contact line that might indicate that, well, A, this counteroffensive has already gotten underway,

whether engaged in shaping exercises, B, what are the Ukrainian chances?

Because I noticed that the Western analytic community is doing that cyclical thing of not quite doom casting,

but trying to manage expectations that, well, actually, this isn't going to be a route for the Russians.

...