You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on Strategy, Defense, and Foreign Affairs.

My name is Ryan Evans. I'm the founder of War on the Rocks. In this episode, I sat down with

Derrimassico and Mike Kaufman, both of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to talk about the war in Ukraine.

We start with a conversation about diplomacy and finish with where things stand on the battlefield and how prepared each side is to stay in the fight.

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That's B-O-O-O-Z-A-L-L-E-N. On to the show. So where do things stand with

this? We were supposed to see some sort of, the White House said they were going to try to

force a deal before Thanksgiving. It's a little after Thanksgiving now. Then they were

said it was going to be by Christmas. Rubio said in his two-hour oppressor in which he was very animated that that might not happen now. It might be a few months. It might be longer than that. What's your perspective on where we stand with diplomacy to end the war or get some sort of a ceasefire? It's clear we're not going to get any kind of deal by Christmas for this year. In fact,

even looking at some of the comments by Vance, his seem to be the more sober-minded comments where he doesn't think we're going to get to a deal in the near term. But I personally do think

in terms of negotiations, this is the beginning of the end in the sense that we are on a path

to some sort of ceasefire negotiated settlement

later in 2026, which is not going to be this round of conversations.

And if you look at what's been happening with all this kind of shuttle diplomacy, different

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