If the Ukrainians don't win, like win in the classic, you know,

Klaus Vitzien sense of determining the politics of the other side,

like if the Ukrainians don't win, if pressure is not exerted on Putin personally,

then the war goes on indefinitely and definitely.

Hello and welcome to Wise's Happening with me, your host Chris Hayes.

Well, we have made it through our future of series. I hope you folks enjoyed that.

We enjoyed putting it together. Of course, one of the things that happened

was we'd put a lot of work into lining it up, rolling it out over March.

And then it meant that during this period in which this seismic world event happened,

the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we were doing those shows.

And there's so much I've been wanting to talk about for the podcast on the war there,

partly because it's one of those issues and one of those news topics where there's a real need

for context and history and background. And I've been doing a lot of reading and,

you know, corresponding with different people, different experts.

There's all kinds of aspects of the conflict that are fascinating to me,

obviously deeply upsetting and horrifying in many respects.

But I do think that one thing that I think has been pretty clear is, you know,

that part of the world, the part of the world from basically Eastern Europe, places that speak

Slavic languages, places adjacent to the, what is now Russia, that were previously part of the

Russian Empire that have moved back and forth under the domain of many different kingdoms and

empires and duchies over the years. I don't think we get a great grounding in the history of those

places in American history. I think there tends to be like in the American history curriculum,

...