"I think there is a very real practical reason why this strategy is deeply flawed if Ukraine says let's negotiate or I will take back Crimea it also has to be willing to say to make those negotiations successful," he said. "If Russia agrees to withdraw to the 2014 borders get out of the Donbass stop the fighting then we have to be willing not to take back Crimea and I don't think Ukraine is willing to say that."
To mark a year since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Galen Druke brings back two experts who first joined the podcast when the war began. Samuel Charap is a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation and author of the book “Everyone Loses: The Ukraine Crisis and the Ruinous Contest for Post-Soviet Eurasia.” James Acton is a physicist and co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Together they describe why the war has not turned out as originally expected, what the risks of escalation are today and how the conflict might come to an end.