We're in Moscow tonight. We're here to interview the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin. We'll be doing that soon.

There are risks to conducting an interview like this, obviously, so we've thought about it carefully over many months. Here's why we're doing it.

First because it's our job. We're in journalism. Our duty is to inform people.

Two years into a war that's reshaping the entire world, most Americans are not informed.

They have no real idea what's happening in this region, here in Russia or 600 miles away in Ukraine.

But they should know.

They're paying for much of it

in ways they might not fully yet perceive.

The war in Ukraine is a human disaster.

It's left hundreds of thousands of people dead, an entire

generation of young Ukrainians, and it's depopulated the largest country in Europe.

But the long-term effects are even more profound. This war has utterly reshaped the

global military and trade alliances and the sanctions that followed have as well

and in total they have upended the world economy.

The post-World War II economic order,

the system that guaranteed prosperity in the West

for more than 80 years, is coming apart very fast and along with it the

dominance of the US dollar. These are not small changes. They are history

altering developments. They will define the lives of our grandchildren.

Most of the world understands this perfectly well.

They can see it.

Ask anyone in Asia or the Middle East what the future looks like.

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