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Aloha and namaste everyone and welcome to Impolitic with John Heilman, a puck and

Odyssey joint featuring lively, in-depth conversations with the people who roam the quarters of power

and influence in America, leaving the warp and wharf and weft of our politics and culture.

When the historians and political scientists and foreign policy wise men and women of the

future look back and set out to record for posterity the story of the war in Ukraine, and maybe

the larger tale of the evolution or wholesale transformation of the geostrategic order in the 21st century,

it seems altogether likely that the past 10 days or so will merit at least one beefy chapter and maybe more than that.

Starting with the infamous Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Volodymyr

Zelensky, and continuing through the extraordinary chain of events that then played out

and are still playing out.

In the U.S., Europe, Russia, and Ukraine itself, it has been a period at once eventful and emotional,

ominous and unsettling, disorienting and disturbing, dark and dire, occasionally baffling,

certainly paradigm bending, probably paradigm shifting,

and even just possibly paradigm shattering, a period with potential consequences that are

dark and dire, as I said a second ago, but so dark and dire as to be almost unfathomable.

You will note that I said almost unfathomable because at times like this, it's imperative for all

of us to try our best to comprehend the apparently incomprehensible. And with that in mind,

we have as our guest today, one of the few people on planet Earth whose knowledge, insight,

and real deal wisdom I fully trust

...