Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org. I'm Ian Masters,

and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with leaks to CNN from European intelligence services suggesting Putin is increasingly

paranoid and hunkered down in a bunker in Krasnodar in southern Russia, apparently afraid of his

own military while taking extreme measures to ensure his cooks don't poison him.

Joining us to discuss whether these leaks are meant to influence Trump's bromance with Putin

to break the Russian dictator's hold over the American president by suggesting Putin won't be around for much longer

is Michael Kimmage, director of the Canon Institute, who was a

professor of history and department chair at the Catholic University of America. From 2014 to 2017,

he served on the Secretary's Policy Planning staff at the United States Department of State,

where he held the Russia-Ukraine portfolio.

He's the author of the Abandment of the West, the history of an idea in American foreign policy,

and collisions the war in Ukraine and the origins of the new global instability.

And he has an article at Foreign Affairs, The Transatlantic Maga Fantasy,

how Trump misread Europe.

Then, with Trump, pulling troops out of Germany because Chancellor Merce observed that the Iranians

were humiliating the United States, we'll speak with Thomas Berger, professor of international

relations at Boston University, who specializes in German politics, international

relations and comparative government in East Asia and political culture. He is the author of

War, guilt and world politics after World War II, and cultures of anti-militarism, national

security in Germany and Japan. Then finally, with U.S. warships

entering the Persian Gulf to escort ships that are trapped out via the straits of Hummus,

...