Welcome to Pushback. I'm Aaron Mate. Joining me is Chas Freeman. He is a retired veteran U.S. diplomat

who served in a number of senior positions, including as the Assistant Secretary of Defense

and U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Chas Freeman, thank you for joining me.

Pleasure to be with you.

What is your assessment of the Russian invasion so far and how the Biden administration

has responded to it?

A huge question.

I thought in the run-up this that Mr. Putin was following a classic form of coercive diplomacy,

massing troops on Ukraine's border, issuing very clear offers to negotiate,

threatening indirectly to escalate beyond the border, not in Ukraine, which the Russians repeatedly said they did not intend to invade, but perhaps

through putting pressure on the United States similar to the one the pressure that

the Russians feel from us namely missiles within no warning distance at all of the capital

of course Washington doesn't have quite the significance in our case that Moscow does for the Russians.

But still, I thought that was what was in store.

I was stunned when Putin actually invaded Ukraine.

I don't think its troops were prepared for it. There's no evidence that they had the

logistics in place or that the troops were briefed about where they were going and why. And so it

looks like an impetuous decision. And if so, it ranks with the decision of Tsar Nicholas the second, the last

Tsar, to go to war with Japan in 1904. That had disastrous consequences for political order

in Russia and I think this is a comparable blunder.

There are lots of things being said about the course of the war, which is now about a month old.

And many of them are, I think, frankly, tendentious nonsense.

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