This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batchel. Bill Rajo, my colleague and co-host from the Foundation for

the Defense of Democracy. He keeps a long-word journal, and we're very pleased to be welcoming

Bill's colleague at the Foundation, John Hardy, who watches Ukraine for us. We begin with the battlefield, what we know of it, and then the operations these last days

that have caused international attention, especially on the destruction of strategic bombers

in Russia.

And then most importantly, negotiations such as they are and the demands such as they are in

anticipation of the NATO meeting forthcoming in the Netherlands in July. John, a very good evening

to you. I want to begin with the shakiest reporting that I've seen recently. This is so-called

mill bloggers out of Russia, which have no news value other than the fact that it's gossip.

But battlefield gossip can describe situations sometimes.

Russia, again, repeatedly is making claims of advancing against Ukrainians.

Is there anything to this, John? It feels as if they're doing the same

advancing all the time and nothing changes from the map. Good evening to you, John. Hey, Bill. Hey, John.

Great to be back with you. So the Russians are continuing to make kind of incremental advances on different parts of the front.

I think the most notable would be the area north of the city of Sumi.

This is in northeastern Ukraine.

And then the area around the small city of Konzhakovka in Donetsk Oblast.

So I'd say the Russian rate of advance since kind of the middle of May to,

here we are early in June, has accelerated to about the peak we saw last fall, maybe slightly under that rate,

whether the Russians will sustain that remains to be seen

or whether it might continue to deteriorate.

I'd say, you know, despite that increased advance, these are still incremental cost of the gains,

...