If you believe as I do that Putin wants to come out of this with something that he can show as a win,

then if it's a choice between what he would see his defeat and some form of escalation he's likely to choose

escalation the next two weeks or so of fighting in the eastern part of Ukraine is

going to be extremely intense in some ways it may be more intense than anything we've seen thus far and may be determinative Does the West have a playbook for a response to a tactical nuclear strike from Russia in Ukraine? That's one of

several unthinkable questions we explore with returned guests to this

podcast Richard Fontaine.

Richard is the CEO of the Center for New American Security, a bipartisan foreign policy think tank in Washington, D.C.

Prior to working at CNAS, Richard was a foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain and worked at the State Department,

the National Security Council, and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

This has called me back.

And I'm pleased to welcome back to the podcast, my friend Richard Fontaine from the Center for New American Security.

Richard thanks for coming back. Thank you for having me. Fan favorite we've

gotten a lot of demand for Richard Fontaine so so pleased that you're taking the time I'm in an

undisclosed location right now all I will say is that it is sunny and warm and in a tax-free jurisdiction and likely tax-free

shores here and likely the resident state of a future US president.

But that arrows it down a little bit.

A little, not entirely, though.

Richard, when you were last with us, you laid out a number of scenarios as to where you thought

the Russia-Ukraine crisis was heading, and that was a few weeks ago so here we are now

this war started late February here we are middle towards the late April so we're a couple months into it.

Before we get into the very specific question I want to drive at, where do you think

things stand right now?

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