Hello, I'm Neil Ferguson, the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution,

and I'm welcoming you to this special summer edition of Goodfellows. Bill Whalen's on vacation this week. We sometimes allow him to do that.

So I'm sitting in the moderator's chair. Just a brief reminder, if you like this show, hit the

like button because that helps us reach more viewers. And if you want more content like this,

click on the subscribe button and Otto magically receive all of the video content, the Hoover Institution posts to its YouTube channel, including HR's excellent show Battlegrounds and the perennial uncommon knowledge with Peter Robinson. All right, that's enough promotion. Let's get to the show. As usual,

I'm joined by my fellow good fellows, John Cochran, the Rosemary and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow here

at Hoover, Nature MacMaster, Fuard and Michel Ajame, senior fellow, one economist, one general, and one historian. And I thought we just get together

this July, kind of has a midsummer feel to it, and talk about the big issues of the moment

and get some update, some updating from the experts. So HR, let me start with you. There's a war going on.

It's lasted quite a bit longer than most pundits expected back in February. I think we're

approaching the six-month mark of the Russian war against Ukraine. How's it going? Is Russia winning? Russia is not winning, Neil,

but I think your point about the length of the war is important. This war's been going on since

2014. I think it's important to remember that 15,000 Ukrainians were killed in the period

2014 to February 23rd of this year. And of course, this renewed offense

have kicked off on the 24th of February. And as I believe that from the very beginning,

this is going to be a year's long war. And I think there are a number of reasons for that,

Neil. One of them is that I don't think either side has the military capacity and ability

to accomplish its war aims. Russia's, of course,

aims are expansive. Initially, they hoped to subjugate all of Ukraine in a very quick offensive,

anticipating that Ukrainian will and their military would just collapse. Of course, those assumptions

turned out to be radically flawed. And also

the Ukrainians object, and Lavarov just made a statement, of course, recently saying, you know,

...