Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at background briefing.

I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll examine a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with Friday's ambush in the White House by the Trump Vance tag team,

which was live streamed to the Kremlin via a plant in the Oval Office from Tass,

in which Zelensky, who wants to make peace, got steamrolled by Trump who wants to make a deal. We'll discuss how Trump is

trying to remove Zelenskyy at Putin's behest by forcing Ukraine to come up with a more compliant

leader or face a cutoff of arms and intelligence from the United States. Joining us is Angela Stent,

the senior advisor and former director of the Center for Eurasian,

Russian and East European Affairs and a professor of government and foreign affairs at Georgetown

University. She's also a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and from 2004 to 2006,

she served as National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council.

And from 1999 to 2001, she served in the Office of Policy Planning at the United States Department of State.

She's the author of The Limits of Partnership, U.S.-Russian Relations in the 21st century,

and, most recently, Putin's world, Russia against the West and

with the rest. Then we'll look into the history of how U.S.-Russia relations went off the rails

and assess whether Trump's capitulation to Putin will improve ties or give Putin a second wind

to cause more mayhem. Joining us is Stephen Crowley, Professor in the Department of Politics at Oberlin University,

and a scholar of Russia and Eastern Europe, with a focus on Labour and the political economy of post-communist transformations.

His teaching centers on Russia and Eastern Europe, peace and conflict studies, revolutions and globalization,

and we'll discuss these article at the nation, No Donald, the USOs Ukraine, not the other way around.

Then finally we'll speak with Natalie Milianchuk, who is a consultant on Euro-Atlantic Security

and a professor of political science at Wayne State

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