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Hello, everybody. I'm Hello everybody and welcome to the Untold Story podcast.

I'm Martha McCallum.

It's great to have you with us again this week. And I'm very pleased to be joined today by Yaroslav Trofimov, who is the author of the new book.

Our enemies will vanish the Russian invasion of Yugoslav Trofimov, who is the author of the new book, Our Enemies Will Vanish the Russian Invasion of Ukraine's War of Independence. The Russian invasion, Ukraine's War of Independence, and he's also

chief foreign affairs correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. Is that your correct title these days?

It is. Yes, it is. I'm very glad to have you here.

I have read your work for a long time.

And I really always think back when I think of your work and I read your reporting.

And whenever I see one of your pieces pop up on the Wall Street Journal, it's always the first thing I read.

Because I think you have a wonderful insight into explaining the stories of war around the world.

So thank you for that.

You know, one of the things that I really got so much out of in one of your early books, The Siege of Mecca,

which was about the birth of Al-Qaeda, it really helped me to understand the background and how complicated it is

in the story of the birth of al-Qaeda and Sunni forces and Shia forces that overlap in all

of those countries, right?

So can you give us, my first question to you is help people who look at what's happening in Ukraine

understand the push and pull and the background of this invasion and of how you see it from a step

back. So thank you so much and thank you for the kind of words. I think when people look at

Ukraine, a lot of them

made a mistake of using labels. Just like they were Sunnis and Shias in the Middle East.

...