Powell: Does Ukraine look to be in a position to potentially take back Crimea and what would Putin do and why? Powell: I think it will be a challenge more so than the previous two successful counter-offensives which succeeded for particular reasons. Whether Ukraine can conduct a third successful counter-offensive is the real unknown question right now with against Russian lines that are much better defended, he says.
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.