From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.

Hello and welcome for free expression with me, Jerry Baker, from the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

Thanks very much for listening. If you're not already a subscriber, please do sign up at Apple,

podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, please leave us a nice

warm review. This week, as the war in Ukraine approaches its first anniversary, I'll be taking a

closer look at the progress of the conflict, what might happen next, and the wider implications

of the war for the US and the world. And how is the Biden administration handling the other

great strategic challenges facing the United States,

in China, the Middle East and elsewhere? My guest is distinguished scholar, commentator and analyst on all

things geopolitical. He's John Chitman, chief executive of the International Institute for Strategic

Studies, a London-based think tank with a truly global reach. Chipman has written widely on global affairs and is an advisor to corporate and other boards on strategic and security issues. He was educated at Harvard, Oxford, and the Lundner School of Economics, and is now in his 30th year at the helm of the institution known as the I-I-S. John Chitman joins me now. John, thanks very much for joining Free Expression. Thank you for having me. So we're at Davos, the annual meeting restored this year to its great, to its heights in January. There are many, many topics, obviously, as usual, that are on people's minds. I think probably it's still fair to say up and most on people's minds, especially on the geopolitical front, is, of course, the war in Ukraine. We're coming up to the

first anniversary of the war in Ukraine. I want to get your sense of where we stand. Obviously, in any war, the fortunes of war, ebb and flow, but this has been particularly interesting over the last year. When the Russians invaded, it's February, I think most people assumed that they would overwhelm Ukrainian defenses pretty quickly and that the war would be over quite quickly in that way. Then it became clear that Ukraine actually was putting up a very stout defense.

That went on for a while. It looked like we might be in for a longer haul. Then back in the

autumn, Ukraine started to make real advances, regaining some territory, regaining some key cities

that the Russians have taken. And people started to talk then about we were within sight of

an outright Ukrainian victory. Now things seem to maybe have fallen back again into a sort of attrition,

almost even a stalemate and reluctant to say stalemate. Give us your sense from your perspective

of where you think we are in this conflict. Well, wars do ebb and flow, and this one will

continue to ebb and flow. I think what would only make

a substantial change is if there were to be a material change in the balance of power. What has been

interesting over the year is that things that were thought of as impossible to give Ukraine in March or April became

routinized by May, June. Things that were off the table in the summer became on the table

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