WTH is Happening With Ukraine’s Peace Talks? Frederick W. Kagan Explains
What the Hell Is Going On
AEI Podcasts
4.4 • 633 Ratings
🗓️ 24 April 2025
⏱️ 55 minutes
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Summary
As President Trump continues to try to end the war in Ukraine, Russia is playing for time. For as long as the U.S. continues to support Ukraine, Russia’s military effort will remain weak and unsustainable. But if Russia is able to stall in negotiations, and degrade American and Western support for Ukraine, they could very well emerge victorious. How should Ukrainian leadership respond to continued American attempts at war-ending negotiations? And what are the consequences if America withdraws its support for Ukraine?
Frederick W. Kagan is the director of AEI’s Critical Threats Project and a former professor of military history at the US Military Academy at West Point. He is the author of the 2007 report Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq, which is one of the intellectual architects of the successful “surge” strategy in Iraq, and the book Lessons for a Long War (AEI Press, 2010). His Critical Threats Project, alongside the Institute for the Study of War, releases regular updates on Iranian activity in the Middle East, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and transnational terrorism on the African continent.
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast is brought to you by the American Enterprise Institute. |
| 0:03.0 | If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and share. |
| 0:07.0 | Thanks for listening. Here's our show. |
| 0:08.7 | What the hell is going on? |
| 0:10.4 | What's really going on? |
| 0:12.0 | We said, what the hell happened? |
| 0:13.5 | You don't have to know what the hell is on it. |
| 0:15.6 | They see what's going on. |
| 0:16.7 | I don't know what's going on. |
| 0:18.2 | What is going on? |
| 0:19.6 | We must find out what's going on. What is going on? We must find out what is going on. |
| 0:28.9 | Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka. |
| 0:30.6 | I'm Mark Teeson. |
| 0:31.5 | Welcome to our podcast. |
| 0:33.3 | What the hell is going on this week? |
| 0:36.0 | What the hell is going on is the Ukraine negotiations seem |
| 0:39.0 | to be coming to a head. There's a U.S. final peace proposal on the table that apparently |
| 0:44.6 | not all the details have been reported, but it basically looks like freezing the current lines |
| 0:51.8 | with some adjustments that Russia would have to give up certain territory. |
| 0:55.5 | Not as much as probably we would have liked. I know Trump had talked about getting back the |
| 0:59.1 | coastline for Ukraine. That's not really on the table anymore, but getting some land around |
| 1:03.3 | Kurson, around Zaporizia, nuclear plant might be there. And the details will be played out, but it's a reasonable, if not perfect deal |
... |
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