I'm John Batchel with my colleague, Anatole Levin. He's traveling. He's in the South Caucasus,

which is a beautiful land, but it's the South Caucasus in conflict zones also. And the conflict of

Ukraine continues unabated as far as I can tell. However, last week, Anatole, when we spoke, the announcement

came from the DOD that there would be no more weapons transferred into Kiev, no major

weapon system, especially air defense, because, and then there was something about the U.S.

needing for its own stocks in case of war, including

the material that was already in Poland waiting for transshipment to Ukraine. Then we're told

by Mr. Zelensky that there was a good phone call with Donald Trump over the July 4th weekend,

and the new announcement is there will be weapons flowing from the U.S. arsenal to Ukraine,

but they will be defensive weapons.

Can you make sense of all of this?

Is Zelensky charmed the president?

Well, yes, I think he has, to a degree.

And I think, though, that think he has, to a degree.

And I think so that the cuts in some of the Western deliveries were indeed motivated by the fact that the US is running short, or at least it is now that the US has to guard against Iran and provide air defense systems to Israel.

It's air defense, which is the critical thing because the U.S. is, you know, it is overstretched.

It's defending its forces in the Middle East.

It's supplying Israel. Of course,

it has to retain massive systems in the Far East as a guard against China. It's supplying Taiwan.

And I think it is actually true that, you know, we've heard a great deal over the past three years over the, you know, the,

the shallowness now of the US military industrial base, largely, of course, because the military

industrial complex, you know, wanted the Pentagon to spend money on huge, hugely expensive big ticket items, fighter jets,

...