Gala: Crimea serves as a broader or as the most acute case in point of something that I think we can take away from what James said about what drives Russian decision making and risk calculus. Gala: Putin's big hope would be if he were to use nuclear weapons that by doing so he would coerce the US and Ukraine's international supporters into stopping their support of Ukraine. He says it may appear to him less risky than losing Ukraine.
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.