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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics, life and culture.

My name is Freddie Gray. I'm the deputy editor of The Spectator.

I'm joined today, I think for the first time in the history of Americano by a guest in Moscow.

I'm joined by Anatoly Carlin, who is the author of the powerful takes substack and can also be found on Twitter at Akarlin,

A-K-A-R-L-I-N-0, the number zero.

Anatoly, thank you very much for coming on.

Obviously, this is a conflict with many different facets between Russia and Ukraine,

but since this is an American podcast, I think I should start by

asking you your assessment of how the Biden administration has reacted to the attack on Ukraine.

Are you surprised that they have not been more hawkish, perhaps more aggressive in response,

or do you think they've acted as you would have expected the Biden administration to react? Well, actually, they acted more

less as I expected because even before the last US elections, one theory I put forward was that,

in fact, a democratic administration would be less

forkish than widely expected towards Russia, simply because back when Trump was in the driving

seat, there was a Russia gate going on for all four years of his presidency until it was

sort of quietly buried in the last month before the election.

Pressure for him to act as someone who was portrayed in the US media as a puppet of Putin

that have been extreme. And I did not exclude the possibility that somebody's Mirkudial

by character as Trump could have actually and ironically gone ahead with the NFZ,

which Biden has more or less categorically ruled out.

Whereas Biden, he is sort of actually has a free avail, in my opinion, to set policy,

...