You're listening to the London Review of Books podcast. I'm Thomas Jones, and today I'm talking to the journalist Tom Stevenson, who's been a contributor to the LRB since 2015,

and has a piece in the new issue of the paper reporting from Ukraine,

as well as one in the previous issue, looking at the history of sanctions in the 20th century,

a review of the economic weapon, the rise of sanctions as a tool of modern war by Nicholas Mulder.

Hello, Tom, and thank you very much for joining me.

Hello, it's a pleasure. So it is now day

34 of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. When you were in Kiev a couple of weeks ago,

it looked as if the Russian bombardment of the capital, as you wrote in your peace, might be going

to intensify. But more recently, the Kremlin's claim that it's now focusing on operations in the

Dombas and the east of Ukraine.

Has there been an apparent shift in Russian strategy?

I mean, it's hard to say, obviously, who knows what Putin and his generals are thinking.

But does it look as if there has?

Well, there's definitely been some shift in the situation on the ground.

There's no doubt about that.

The extent to which that represents a shift

in Russian strategy versus the sort of natural course of the war, the balance of equipment forces,

remains somewhat open to my mind. Certainly when I was there, or even a week or 10 days ago,

it was still the case that putative attempts to further seal off the capital were on the cards for the Russian military.

They had established positions in Makarov, slightly to the west of the city, and appeared to be making some gains to the east of Kiev as well.

At present, there have been limited successes for the Ukrainian side.

And so, positions that previously appeared to be well dug in for the Russians, most prominently

...