 I'd like to welcome everybody to our first virtual panel discussion event of the semester on the Russo-Ukrainian War at one year, or just if you want to count it from the full-scale invasion of Ukraine that took place just about a year ago. This is a virtual panel discussion hosted by the Department of Political Science and our School of Education Behavioral Sciences is co-sponsored as well by the EMGA Political Science Student Organization and the Alpha New Zeta Chapter of Pisces Alpha, which is the National Honorary Society for Political Science Research in Students. So before we get started, just very briefly introduce our department, talk a little bit about our department. We have quite a few different programs today that are offered both on campus and online. We have two Bachelor of Science degrees offered in the department in both political science as well as interdisciplinary studies, as well as minors in political science, African-African diaspora studies, environmental policy studies, global studies, pre-law, and they also offer a certificate in European Union Studies. So if you're a political science major, that's great, but if you're not a political science major, you can always think about being one, or you can think about perhaps doing a minor of five or six classes of political science or global studies or whatever. So something to keep in mind if you wanna think about broadening your degree program perhaps. So without too much further ado, I wanna go ahead and introduce our panelists. Unfortunately, one of our schedule panelists is not able to make it today, which may partially be counting for our low turnout. Dr. John Hall was going to be joining us today, but he's taken ill, unfortunately. So he's not gonna be joining us, not gonna feel a little bit under the weather. Hopefully he'll be back for our next event in a couple of weeks, but we, of course, will send out our best wishes to him for a full and quick recovery from hopefully just a short term stomach bug or something. But our panelists that we do have, of course, should definitely be able to pull up the slack. So we have Dr. Matty Haverly, who is a Lecturer of Political Science here at Middle Georgia State and has been here for about six and a half years now. I'm not mistaken. His doctorate is from the University of Florida in Gainesville. And then also we have Dr. Thomas Matrock, who is an Instructor of Political Science here at Middle Georgia State, has been with us for almost three years now. He formerly taught at Air University, UNC Greensboro and the Army War College and is the Executive Director of the Joint Civil Military Interaction Network. His doctorate in political, in a conflict resolution is from Nova Southeastern University. And I am a Dr. Christopher Lawrence. I'm the Chair of the Political Science Department also an Associate Professor of Political Science. This is my 11th year at Middle Georgia State and my doctorate is in Political Science from the University of Mississippi, or Ole Miss. So for those of you that have not joined us for an event before, it's gonna work fairly straightforwardly, I think. We will get started with some questions that I've selected as the moderator. We will accept our questions through the Q and A and chat windows. Might wanna try the Q and A window first. We're gonna try that out for the first time. They just added this feature to Teams. So we'll see how that works. So try to put your questions in the Q and A window. If that doesn't work, then we'll switch to the chat window. But regardless, I will kind of moderate select questions that are submitted through chat. You're certainly more than welcome to ask more than one question, but we will prioritize asking one question per participant at the very minimum if we can get to all of them, hopefully. And do be courteous and civil to each other. I know that for some people this may be a controversial or very much perhaps even a personal topic. And so I do want to make sure that we are bearing in mind that we need to be civil and courteous to each other in the discussion, even if we have some differences about the issues at play here. So these are just some examples of questions we may be getting to on things like current historical background conflict, current developments in the conflict, Joe Biden's visit this past week probably will come up as well as where do we go from here? What is the exit strategy? What is the off ramp? Is there an off ramp? That's worth saying. And then situations involving the support for Ukraine from its neighbors and other allies as well, and whether those are going to persist as well as perhaps the involvement of other countries like China, South Africa may come up as well. So we got lots and lots of different topics that we could be discussing and I will make this window go away so you can see more of our faces. And I can get started with our questions if everybody is ready to go ahead and get started. There we go. So if Matt and Tom are ready, we'll go ahead and get started with our first question. So just kind of as a background question to get everybody up to speed, what are the major cultural, historical and geographical connections and distinctions between the two countries that are primarily in the conflict, Russia and Ukraine? I don't know if Matt, if you want to start here. I don't know. If so, I'm willing to start if unless Tom, okay. Well, so without going into exhausting detail, Russia and Ukraine actually have kind of the same historical origination point. They both kind of come out of the ninth century out of a polity that was called a Rus'kiev. And so part of this debate really about between Russia and Ukraine is that there's a common historical lineage but it's created sort of differing legends in what it means. To the Russians, what it means is sort of the imperial destiny of Russia. To the Ukrainians, what it means is a long held nationalist fight for their own nation state, a struggle against larger empires who over the years occupied their territory. And so a part of this whole debate is a debate about imperialism versus nationalism and that was somewhat captured in a recent interview. I should say speech, not really an interview. Vladimir Putin kind of questioned even the right of Ukraine to exist. But it comes down to even things, for instance, if you talk to the Ukrainian government, they don't even like the terms that sometimes are used regarding them when they say the Ukraine because that translates as the borderland. And what they see it as under those uses is that Ukraine turns into sort of just a colony, if you will, of Russia. And so that is what I would think, I'm sure Tom's gonna come in here and expand on this, but I would say that that's kind of, they have a mutual origination point but the interpretation of what that origination point means lies at the heart of the conflict between these two countries. And of course their differential power. Again, you got an imperial force versus a national force. So I will shut up now. Great Matt, and there's not much I can add to what you described it. However, what I would like to throw into the discussion is exactly as you pointed out is how these two nation states took divergent paths. So they shared this common origination point as you rightly discussed. And then they took a different paths. The other part, and a huge part of that, I think which is relevant to our discussion today, is that Ukraine preceded Russia. That the Muscov in Russia followed Ukraine. So even from a historical perspective, Ukraine is the first and Russia followed afterwards. And I think that's relevant today. Certainly it was relevant in the late 1800s, early 1900s, in the Russo-Russian Crimean War and so forth and so on. And so I think also this common ancestry, and that may not be the right word, but this common history that they share has been a part of an ongoing lengthy conflict between these two countries and even before they were countries. So what we see today, and I think from a historical perspective and certainly one from a conflict resolution perspective is that this is a lengthy discourse. And oftentimes we look at a conflict that originates and say, oh gee, look at this bounded war, but we don't put it in the context of several hundreds and hundreds of years of stress and friction and conflict within this region. So that is all I would really add to that. I think, Matt, you pointed out the history perfectly. Okay, thanks. And before we move on to the next question, I just want to make one introduction that I forgot to introduce in the beginning. And that is our Dean, Dr. David Beek, is also decided or is able to join us this evening. So I wanted to thank him for joining us and also for the school co-sponsoring our event. I don't know, I don't know why I put David on the spot and asked if he wants to have to have anything to say, but if he does, he's of course more than welcome to. But give him about 10 seconds maybe. Doesn't sound like it, so I will move on if he does want to say something or later on, we'll sort of let him do so. So on to our second question, kind of falling off in the first in some ways, what do you think that Russia does want to control at least some, if not all of modern Ukraine, particularly the Crimean Peninsula and the Donbass region in the East? Well, I don't know if you want to do the, well me to go again, Tom or do you want, okay. So, well, so a lot of this, again, not to overly historicize all of this, but when Russia was developing as an imperial power, in the late 18th century, they conquered Crimea. And that became, of course, one of the sources that a century after that was involved in the Crimean War that involves so many European great powers at the 1850s. And during the early days, if you will, of the Cold War, Stalin, who was a Georgian, by the way, in his own ethnicity, he handed Crimea back, of course, you all understand something is back within the USSR, so it's not really back, but he handed it back to the, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. That's what the USSR called there, I guess roughly equivalent would be like states in the United States, was they referred to them as Soviet, so a Soviet was a worker's group in communist ideology, a worker's parliament. So that's an, even for that matter, speaking of sort of one of the great Soviet leaders, Brezhnev was himself a Ukrainian. So part of this is that one of the ways in which Russia imperialized was that Russia used to do a lot of sort of internal colonization, they would move people around. So they would move people out of places, they would also move people into places. And so they settled Russians into what ostensibly you could think of as Ukrainian territory. They also took Ukrainians out of that territory and spread them in other places. And then they opened up avenues for an internal migration or migratory process. For instance, large numbers of Ukrainians migrated toward the more Asian side of Russia, back into the 19th century, the 18th and 19th centuries. So they did a lot of this kind of stuff. And it was one of the ways in which they imperialized. And so the Americans made a big deal about this as sort of against the Soviets. But the truth of the matter, this was something the Russians have always done. This is Russia being Russia. One of those areas that wound up with a lot of settler populace of Russians was the Donbass region. So basically Eastern Ukraine and the Crimea, which is in Southern Ukraine, are pockets of Russian migrants that have now lived there in many cases for generations and have built up their own cultures and so on and so forth. So much so that you could find in certain places in Ukraine, you can utilize the Russian language alternatively to the Ukrainian language because of opening different Ukrainian leaders that had differing relationships with different Russian leaders. But that's what's happening. So what Russia has claimed, what Putin has argued is something that, and I'll let Tom talk more about this because he's the expert here, but it's referred to as irredentism. But the idea is that you should, you take back territory that you once held. And so he makes that claim with things like the Donbass and the Crimea. And to some extent, he seems to have even argued for the entirety of the whole country in that. But anyway, that's what I'll put in there. I'll let Tom take over. I know he's more of an expert in these matters than I am. Well, you're kind, Matt, I think, right? Which is, sure, absolutely everything you said and what I would add to that is this irredentism that you speak of is that Russia continues to view itself. And again, what we're talking about is it doesn't matter all that much what we think of Russia. It's what Russia thinks of itself, certainly from a conflict perspective. And Russia views itself as an empire. Now, we remember that to close the World War I, if anything happened, we realized the collapse of empires. However, Russia didn't experience that collapse. And so through its Soviet period and now into current period, it still views itself as an empire and wants to reestablish itself that as Matt Ridley points out, as an imperial power within what had been, say, the Soviet sphere if we looked on the map and we looked at those satellite states. And so going into Ukraine allows it to begin to push itself out as that imperial power and to influence the geopolitical landscape because then it has its eyes on Georgia, on Moldova, on Romania. And so you just can go through the laundry list of former Soviet satellite states. That's why they're all worried. That's why they're all looking over their shoulder to see where Russia is at because there is no Russia unless it's an empire. And so it has, when we talk about existential fights, Russia's in an existential fight for its own identity in this new geopolitical space that's being created. And so this is where then Putin comes up with the comment that there is no Russia without Ukraine. He's absolutely correct. Because anyway, so now, so I would add that to what Matt had said. The other thing I would add is, you know, why Crimea? And I think too, we have to take a very broad view of why Crimea. And one of the very important reasons is its strategic location on the Black Sea and a port for Russia's Black Sea Fleet. So it's a warm water port. Of course, they have the Vladivostok in some other ice, cold ice, but to have a warm water port that they can move in and out of, Crimea gives that to them because then they can sail through the Dardanelles, which then gives them the second most important part of Crimea and that is access into Middle East, North Africa. Because as we remember, Russia was pretty much moved out of Middle East, North Africa as a player and was only really able to reestablish itself by aligning with Syria, but it was only able to do that after it had annexed Crimea allowing its sea fleet unrestricted access to North Africa. So now not only is Russia pushing itself out west into former Soviet satellite states, it's also reestablishing itself in the Middle East, North Africa. And Crimea allows it to do both those things. So I guess I would be, most of what I would add to the discussion. Okay, thanks. We did have one clarification from the chat regarding the history of the situation with Crimea. It was correctly pointed out in the chat that it was actually Khrushchev or under Khrushchev that Crimea was moved from Russian jurisdiction to Ukrainian jurisdiction. I think it was 1956 if I'm not mistaken, but regardless, as Matt rightly pointed out, within the Soviet Union, that was kind of an academic exercise since Ukraine had no real sovereignty of its own or that matter, Russia had no real sovereignty of its own either under at least in practice in the Soviet era. So let's, I guess our final update sort of thing. Where do things stand compared to how they were when we last discussed this? I guess we last assessed about five months ago in October. At that point, I think the Ukrainian forces were kind of on the offensive, if I'm not mistaken, in both the South and East, seems like things have kind of slowed down a little bit since then, but what would your take on the current status and be as far as where things stand and where things at least in the short term seem to be going in terms of the battlefront and that sort of thing. I don't have Tom, if you'll let's start on this one, since Matt, start on the last couple or? Sure, sure, I can do that. Yeah, I think that as you point out, Chris, we're almost at a point of stasis where both sides have slowed down, certainly the fighting is not necessarily slowed down, but strategic operations are coming to a stasis. Now, I guess several reasons. One, the fighting season is this odd way of characterizing it, but it's certainly a concern. The other is just the justical realities of having to resupply, to have to reconstitute. Certainly when we look at Russia, it's trying to conscription, bringing in more troops. It's trying to prepare itself for another offensive, which certainly Ukraine is waiting for. And I think the song of this flows into, as you mentioned, one of the questions about talking about Biden's visit and so forth and so on. And that is what do we wanna have happen here? I think if this year has told us one thing, it's that we really have not identified what our goals and objectives are in this fight between Ukraine and Russia. We've talked a lot about democracy. We've talked a lot about the future of the West. We've talked a lot about the fight in Ukraine is really a fight here for American hegemony in the world and our stature and the world so forth and so on. But we really haven't articulated, what do we wanna have happen here? Do we want Ukraine to win this war or do we want Russia to lose this war? What will the world look like after there's some kind of resolution to what is happening now? And without that having being said, I think right now we also have military folks trying to figure out what's happening here. How do we move forward? How do we move the ball down the field when we don't have enough leopard tanks? When the M1 tanks won't show up for another year? When we're not giving artillery range, artillery pieces with long enough ranges to hit logistical sites that the Russians have. So I think just the natural flow of events are causing things to slow down while all the forces are trying to figure out, okay, what's phase two of this thing? We've fought ourself to this kind of stasis and now we have to, there has to be some type of activity that will move us to phase two. So I think that's where we're at right now is people, and again, Ambassador John Herbst writing with the Atlanta Council brought this up as well. And that is, what are we trying to do here? President Biden's comment was, I think his quote was, we're with Ukraine as long as it takes. And I think part of that then is as long as what takes to defeat Russia, to have regime change, to whatever. So I think that if that made any sense, I think that's where we're at right now. Well, I think that that more than covers everything, but I will add that the, so both sides are somewhat rearming during this time. So the, and both sides are reaching out to other potential partners to help them rearm. And I was listening on a radio cast on NPR. And I was talking about the, in the last year, both sides, if you will, have really spent their much of their field armor capability. And so that's part of the reason why the call on Zelinsky's side, the Ukrainian side to get American and other European, the British and the Germans and so forth, the Swedes and whatnot, sending other additional armor capabilities. Because on the ground, this is an armor war. The Russians themselves, now, as there are, I saw some data that said that they've lost a 40% of their armor capability, but what that data was referring to was their deployed field army. Now that doesn't, so that shouldn't be thought of as their actual armor capability. Their actual armor capability is much larger than that. The Russians, quite frankly, have two million people in the reserves alone. And that's even without a more aggressive call-up of their draft forces. But on both sides, what you have is they're replenishing, they're trying to replenish their armor stocks and they're trying to replenish their manpower stocks. I saw another data, Russians have taken 200,000 casualties. Now that includes wounded and KIA, but the Ukrainian forces are much smaller, writ large, they're much smaller. So they don't need to take as much to feel it more. And there is a difference also in the sort of ways of war. The Russians are known for not worrying that much about casualties. Whereas the Ukrainians, at a minimum, are trying to put up a good front with the West. And a part of putting up a good front in the West is that you treat your soldiery like the human beings that they are. Putin doesn't have to worry about that, but Zelensky does. So they're taking stock and they're re-upping up. I saw some things that talked about the possibility once we get into spring of renewed offensives on both sides. But I question, much like what Tom brought up, I question whether either side has significant capabilities in place to do that. And I could be completely wrong, but it's gonna be, they've got to get the troops up there and they have to be trained. And right now, the Russians called up 300,000 troops, but for the most part, they have to train them up. And it's gonna take a little bit just to get there. I mean, even though they're known for their, run people through in a couple of months and send them right in the front, but I'm not sure, I could be wrong, but I don't think we're gonna really see a major offensive in the immediacy like some of the reports. I could be wrong. I think that if we do see offensives, I think it would be closer to the late spring, early summer before that happens. Also that would be more conducive, particularly for tracked and wheeled armored vehicles. And again, that's what they're fighting with. This is not Vietnam. They're not a bunch of light infantry running around. So, and in fact, they all come out of the old Warsaw Pact Soviet Army days and that's what that armies were built on. So that's where I think that's the only thing I would add on that. So, but like I said, I've been wrong before. I'll be wrong again. So, just kind of follow up and maybe nail that down a little more, I guess. What is the, this would be trying to, I think this would kind of be in real time, is what does kind of get things out of the stasis, stalemate, whatever? Is it the change of weather? Is it the arrival of new weapons? Is it some sort of political decision to, it's like, okay, we've been sitting around for six months and we haven't done anything. We need to get off the pod and really kind of show that we're, I mean, which of those, if any, or maybe some combination of those, do you think is what's kind of the next part? Well, if it's all right, Matt, I'll jump in. I think there's a couple of things and we're beginning to see them. And I think it's also important to remember that as, I'll make a real quick note here, is the Russians, the Russians are fighting, they're fighting two wars. So the one that we pay a lot of attention to is of course, what's happening on the battlefield, tanks, troops, certainly casualties, casualties and so on and so on. But the Russians are also engaged in political warfare and that political piece doesn't often get as much attention. I'm swinging this, Chris, to your question, I think. And that is Putin and Russia is recognizing that they have to fight a political war and they've been doing this ever since 45. And for instance, just recently, what the past couple of days, Putin came out and said, well, we're pulling out of the START Treaty with the United States, Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. And that's just a veiled nuclear threat. And from a political warfare standpoint, what Putin is trying to do is cause political tension within the United States between the Democrats and Republicans. And he's doing a pretty good job of it now because some of the Republicans are beginning to talk about giving a blank check to Ukraine, what's all this money for? Why are we supporting Ukraine and so forth? And this plays right into the political warfare of Russia. Also looking for ways to split the NATO alliance. As you remember, he tried to weaponize oil. Only the winter over in Germany didn't play into his hand and it was a mild winter. And so the weaponization of that oil didn't work out real well. But he, so he's fighting a war on all these different fronts, not just with tanks and artillery pieces. And he's conducting cyber attacks, information wars, influence operations, which is characterized by many as a garrison mob doctrine. And so I think whenever we look at how's the war going, the second question is which one? Is it the one in the battlefield or is it the political warfare? Because in this regard, Russia's making some headway on that political warfare front. Because we also have to remember that most of the world doesn't care about this war, doesn't see it as their war. Certainly Africa doesn't. Many countries in Africa do not. And they're hedging their bets. They're holding their cards close to their vest here and they're seeing Russia as standing up against the oppressor, against the West, the United States. And so they view, they're viewing Russia as, hey, look at this. And so they're holding on too now. And we've seen some overtures by South Africa. We see that India is still staying away. Because they see it as a European conflict, not as a global one. And so on the battlefield, I think the Ukrainians have done a bang up job along with holding Russia at bay. No one, I don't think anyone ever thought they were going to be able to do that. I mean, they have and kudos to them and they are just proving themselves to be incredibly competent soldiers. However, on the political warfare front, that's a whole different picture, I think. I see Russia making some headway there. And especially when we talk about information warfare. Very good, Tom. Yeah, anything I would add? A predictor point might be some kind of measure of critical mass. Once you got a critical mass on either side where they thought they could conduct an offensive, they would. And on the political question, the famous Klaus Witzian dictum, war politics of policy by other means. That's always gonna be a factor. Again, I know I've listened to a radio cast about the Indians. And so that the Biden administration not too happy with India right now. Could be because India is like, yeah, we're gonna deal with the Russians because we need the Russians to hold the Chinese at bay. And so there's a, in some ways, the conflict is looked at as isolated. Well, that's a them thing. But in other ways, it's part and parcel of globalized power orders. And this is an ongoing thing. But I think we should look on both sides, maybe for a certain degree of critical mass. And that might be a predictive point at that point. If you're looking for a metric to try to measure from. Okay, great. So I guess kind of tying into the political question here, the political positioning, you know, obviously as we said before, Joe Biden made a fairly unexpected visit to Kiev earlier this, or Kiev this earlier, I guess this week or over the past week. What, if any impact do you think that's likely have on the conflict, both in terms of the situation on the ground in Ukraine, I guess, but also in that broader political question of, does this kind of rally support in the West, particularly in a way that, you know, wasn't there, say, a few weeks ago? Okay, I jump in again, Matt, if you don't know. Yeah, and that's a great question, because certainly the Ukrainians are really appreciated, I think, of Biden's visit there. Certainly the U.S. has been an incredibly key player in this. The United States has stepped forward and provided the leadership within NATO that has been needed to bring, to hold this alliance together and support of Ukraine. Now, very specifically, and I'll just talk about one point regarding Biden's visit to Ukraine. Within Russia, it was viewed as humiliating to Russia that the President of the United States was able to come to Kyiv and walk around Kyiv with Zelensky while air raid sirens are going off. So just a slap in the face to Russia that this occurred, also considering that Putin has never visited the front lines of his troops. And what that now has done is if we look back too at Putin, his problems are really within his own country coming from those further to the right than him. So the pressure and the criticism of Putin is that he's not men aggressive enough, that he's not been fighting hard enough. And so his political life right now depends on being even more violent and aggressive to keep the far right that's pushing against him away. And so now when Biden comes in and visits into Kyiv, I mean, that far right now is even more animated and pushing against Putin. And ostensibly, that's one of the reasons he said, well, I'm gonna pull out of the START treaty with the United States was to do something to try and assuage the struggle he's having with the far right in his own country. Because when we talked back in October and when we talked back in February of last year, one of the things we talked about, well, if Putin's not there, if Putin is moved out of office for you. Well, what we realize now is that the people behind him are even further to the right than he is. So we pretty much have to manage that as well. Do we deal with Putin or do we deal with people that are even worse than him right now? So that's really all I would add to that piece. But it don't, so it's always a major deal in national security policy when the president goes and gives a presentation. And particularly when the president links up with his opposite head of state for that country. So this has, at least in the short term, this has brought a level of a public exposure or I should say a re-exposure to the plight of the Ukrainians to the perceived and real viciousness of the Russians. And the, and of course the call and remember that President Zelensky not that long ago came to the Capitol and gave a speech to a joint session of Congress and about the recent deals. And so I think to some extent, Putin and Biden are both trying to kind of one up each other a little bit. This is kind of what the international relations theory they like to call tit for tat, game theory type stuff. And that's what's going, because they're in a dance. They're in a power dance. But of course, whenever it's the US and a near peer like Russia or China or somebody like that it's very dangerous because you're talking about, particularly when Biden or when Putin throws down to Gauntlet and he says, well, I'm not gonna observe, start to that amps up the level of the security threat. The security dilemma goes up because the great problem with strategic weapons is that to some extent you can't use them. I mean, there are things you can, you have to have them and we play these games with each other on them. But at the end of the day, as I said, I know there's a few of my students that are in the audience today. As I mentioned in one of the lectures that Albert Einstein had said that I don't know what weapons World War Three would be fought with but I know that World War Four will be with sticks and stones and what he meant by because of the sheer power of strategic weapons today is that they could destroy the world and so I would caution everybody when the leader of Russia is talking that way that that's not I don't want people to run out and go down into bunkers or something. But I mean, it's definitely has raised up the rhetoric and so they're playing the game of high politics. And so we'll see how this plays out but it's definitely worrisome. Yeah, if I could just add to that, thank you, Matt. There's also, I think it's important for us as well and of course, we're political science department. This recognition that the geopolitical landscape is shifting as we stand on it. And one of the things I think many people have not come to terms with as certainly those I speak with whether it's within the US or EU context is that the 75 years, thereabouts, post-World War II, the Cold War major Cold War era is an anomaly in world history. World history is political theory, jungle theory and the survival of the fittest and as you said, it's power, power relations. It's that the world that arrived in 1648 and Westphalia is collapsing around us. And we're trying to understand what's going on with a Cold War framework. And I think it's kind of a procrustian bed where we're taking this shifting geopolitical landscape and pulling it and tugging it and trying to fit it inside this Cold War bed that the world made perfect sense to us. And that's no more. It is now, we get characterized as ancient history and we're going to have to find new ways to understand this shifting landscape and these different power relations. One of the things we talk about, Matt, as you talked about in class, is that the two countries that benefited the most from the post World War II framework and the institutions of peace were Russia and China. And they are now, as you said, near peers in this geopolitical landscape because they benefited so much from that post World War II framework. And now we're having to deal with that. We're having to understand what does it mean to have these three behemoths roaming this geopolitical landscape. And so that, we're challenged as well in just trying to make sense of it. So getting back to earlier point, and again, I kind of want to follow up here on the propaganda, the value of, Biden appearing in the Ukrainian capital. And by the way, also being able to ride a train to and from the Ukrainian capital. Can you imagine, just the, you would think that that would be like critical infrastructure. You would have taken out like in the first week of the war but you can still like ride a passenger train to Kiev, apparently, just like nothing. That has felt like a very effective war on the Russians behalf, from my perspective at least. But given the point about Putin in the front, I'm curious, and I don't have any specific recollection of this, but to my knowledge, he has not even set foot in Crimea since 2014. So, I mean, is there, I mean, I realize that public opinion doesn't really work the same way in a near totalitarian, certainly authoritarian dictatorship that it does in say Western country. But, I mean, obviously, the contrast of Putin not setting foot in all this, for Russia for the last nine years versus Joe Biden wandering around the streets in Kiev, like it's Washington, DC. I mean, I realize that's, how does Putin get to that point where he lets himself be embarrassed that way, I guess, is the question I'm trying to wrap my head around is surely he has to have some sort of propaganda value. I mean, it's not like the Chinese are afraid to be seen in Tibet. So, what's the deal there, I guess? Is it just that he doesn't wanna provoke the Ukrainians by showing up in Crimea? So, one thing I would just add on the issue with Kiev. Remember that in the early days either if you wanna call it the current war or the current iteration of the conflict dating all the way back to 2014, is that Putin tried to take Kiev. He tried to take Kiev. And he did it with massive strikes. The thing is he couldn't get enough significant numbers of troops on the ground and so forth. He couldn't operate. What he tried to do is he tried to get it with an air war and rocket and artillery bombardment. And as Tom has pointed out, the Ukrainians somewhat survived, maybe didn't, I don't think they surprised themselves, but they surprised everybody else in their ability to be the David against Goliath. So, that's part of what's answering the infrastructure issue there. He tried and failed. And he mostly did that because I think his people, his advisors underestimated the will of the Ukrainians and they overestimated the capabilities of the Russian rocket forces, the strategic rocket forces for their ability to take out key infrastructure and have a whole thing collapse. And that's actually a common mistake that's happened throughout time. I mean, even in the United States back in the 1920s, they used to talk about Billy Mitchell was running around. Well, you didn't need armies anymore because you could win with bombers and so on and balloons and dirigibles. And of course, World War II happened and we dropped a ton of bombs. And at the end of the day, you needed infantrymen to hold, you needed armor to take it and infantrymen to hold the ground. And in some ways warfare hasn't changed in that sense. So, that's part of it. There was an underestimation, there was an overestimation. And when the propaganda point with Putin, I would say is that this is just a guess. This is just a guess on his internal circle. As Tom pointed out, he has to keep certain people happy because they keep him in power. And he might be operating under a psychology that if I step foot in, even in Crimea or in the Donbass region, which would be relatively safe places for him to go. But if I do that, then what I'm risking is I'm giving legitimacy to those upstarts, those little people who should be quaking in their boots on me. So that might be it. It might be sort of a reverse image, whereas Biden wants to be seen. Putin might feel or might have advisors telling him, being seen on the ground might not have that a positive effect on public opinion and might have the opposite. Particularly the opinion that matters to him, which are the opinion of the oligarchs. So that's just a little bit of a look in that. And it's also something to keep in mind that, remember that Joe Biden is an American politician, a Western politician generally, he thinks in terms of winning the hearts and minds of the people. And Zelensky has clearly bought into that, which is not true by the way of some of his predecessors as Ukrainian presidents. But Putin is from a different school. And you know, Putin's school of thought is that he's the man of steel. And to some extent, the man of steel remains that because he hides behind the curtain because we don't get to see what the wizard actually looks like. So that might be a little bit off in the weeds on that. But that's a way maybe to think about why it is the way it is. But I've spoken too much, so I'm gonna shut up. No, thanks, Matt. And what I would add to that is I think, I think, you know, on some of us too, talking about some things you see, Leje, we wish we weren't talking about that. But, you know, look, the optics were fantastic of Biden walking around Kiev, as said with the air raid sirens with Zelensky. And as I think, Matt, you point out, and I don't want to be too cynical. However, Biden's age is coming to question whether or not he's gonna get the nomination by the Democratic Party to run for another four years. So this is certainly, the optics are, he's a vibrant, 80-some-year-old world leader. And here he is in a combat zone walking around Kiev with another world leader showing that strength. So that's not gonna hurt him as he's getting ready to run for another term. Putin doesn't have that problem. He's an authoritarian that's moving toward becoming a totalitarian. And so he doesn't have necessarily a population that he has to appease. That's already happened. The dissenters within Russia, we don't even see pictures of them anymore. So he doesn't deal with that. The other point I would just make in, I don't know what this directly relates to, but I know it relates to what we're talking about. And that is when you say, well, you know, what's going on? You know, what's happening with the politics within Russia? Some years ago, the United States made a decision to rely on intelligence gathering primarily through signals or what we call SIGINT, signals intelligence. And we moved away from human or human intelligence. And that led, I think, to an overestimation of the strength of the Russian military and its capabilities. We just simply no longer had, for lack of a better word, spies on the ground, who were drawing a picture of what the Russian military looked like so we could make realistic assessments. And I think that we simply overestimated what they were capable of doing. And one of the things about a military is oftentimes it has a greater deterrent effect when you don't use it. When you, because when you do use it, things break down, people get lost, all the things that can go wrong do go wrong. And I think that's exactly what happened to, and with the Russian forces, and we sadly had not created a more realistic picture of their capabilities. And I think that led to General Milley, Chairman and Joint Chiefs of Staff, testifying before Congress, two weeks before the Russian invasion, he said the war will be over in three days. So, here's the most senior military official in the US who's getting the best intelligence, saying he thinks it's gonna be over in three days. That was simply a failure of intelligence gathering led to that kind of an assessment. Thank you. So, and by the way, I've been remiss in reminding our audience that if you have questions, please do post them in the chat. We do want to try to get to those. We have about 30 minutes remaining on the clock. So we definitely have some time for audience questions as well. But while you think about questions or don't think about questions up to you, you don't have to ask questions. I will just move on to another question. So, say I guess on the female politics and political support, as both of you have kind of pointed out, there have been more internal divisions in the US in recent months, I would say, suggesting that the US should reduce or eliminate its aid to Ukraine. How realistic a prospect is this happening? Is it really kind of, I mean, when you look at the public peep polls, it doesn't seem like there's majority support for, I mean, there's majority support for continuing to help Ukraine, but it is perhaps a little soft to a certain amount of Republicans. But there's definitely divisions within the Republican Party. So, is that a matter of concern? Is it something that is a serious prospect or how do you sort of handicap the chances of that happening? And I guess, Matt, it's kind of your turn, I guess. Am I up on this one? Okay, well, it's always a matter of concern. I'll just say that. It's always a matter of concern. So, the Biden administration has an advantage on this in that the Senate is still under the control of the Democratic Party. And the Senate has overall a stronger role in foreign policy than the House would look at to compare the two chambers. Also, the Republicans, at least right now, are not unified around an opposition to the aid. There are factions that either are opposed to it or want a reduction in aid. But to make a full fight against the president on it, they have to come together within their own conference. And one of the things that we saw in the recent election of Speaker Trump is that the Senate has a lot of support and that election of Speaker McCarthy is that that conference is split apart on many internally, which is interesting from an American political science background because, of course, historically, when the Democrats had arguments amongst themselves, it was kind of like, well, that's sort of the Democrats, the Democratic Party being the Democratic Party. I mean, they don't just argue about the seats at the table. They argue about the table itself. They always have. That's kind of who they are. But what's fascinating is that, at one hand, we've had some ideological polarization. As the Democrats have become more liberal and as the Republicans have become more conservative, they've actually begun to have a fight amongst themselves as to how conservative is conservative. And so that's kind of interesting to watch that play out. I will say this as they crank up with the presidential election, and we're already in the presidential election cycle, especially not if the midterms are over. This could become a major fight between the two sides. And I don't know if there'll be a coalescing around former President Trump, and if he stands up against Ukrainian support, that could change things. But right now, I would say that Biden has the advantage, just as the advantage as Chair Lawrence pointed out. He has public opinion on his side on this issue, not necessarily on other issues. But on this issue, so in the short term, I don't think it's going to have an impact on the funding. But I am open to seeing that over the long term, this could be a major fissure. And the other thing that happens within this is that the Republicans kind of have to be a little bit careful of so that the standard Republican opposition to any Democratic president is that the Democrat is weak. He's weak because he's one of these limp-wristed liberals, and that's what they are. They're the peace-loving peaceniks and the lovey-dovey hippies, and so we could just... But this group, this insurgent group within the Republican Party, they're taking the peacenik position here, which is we're going to cut back. We should cut back on the support and the money and stuff like that. And so that's an interesting place for a portion of the Republicans to be. Can they win out against the larger culture of the Republican Party, which is that when there's a perception that the national interest is at stake, then you unify behind the flag, and you salute and you carry on, and you say, separate my country, do or die. So what's going to happen within that? I don't know, but it will be interesting to watch. And yes, to everything Matt just said, and the only thing if I could just add is, again, this discussion, I would argue at its root has Putin's fingerprints all over it. And this idea through influence operations, through info wars is to have created a discussion within the Republican Party of whether or not we should continue support for Ukraine, whether or not it should be open-ended, should it be a blank check. So all of these discussion points arguably have Putin's fingerprints all over them. He wants this discussion to happen. He wants this dissension to occur, and he's going to feed into it, whether it's Russian television or bots or Twitter or whatever the case may be, that he's going to continue to flood us with things that will cause us to continue to talk about it. Because the more we talk about it, the more it's going to take on a life of its own. So in my mind, it's intentional. Now what's interesting, and what I expect to see happen now is, okay, well, how do we get the Democratic Party to begin to split on this? And I think we're going to begin to see the start to thing being spun differently. And it's going to speak to the peace wing of the Democratic Party, the threats of nuclear war. And we're going to begin to see more info warfare here, more spinning of that. And so now that peace movement of the Democratic Party will begin to stir up. And then you have the Republicans over here begin to stir up. And then Europe is going to see that. The EU countries are going to see that. The native countries are going to see that. And they're going to begin having those discussions. And so again, it's back to that issue. How's the war going? Which one? Is it the ground war or is the political warfare? Because it's kind of like kind of like the magician, you know, who's in misdirection. Don't look over here. Yeah, I want you to look over here, but not where we're misdirecting you over here. So. Yeah, just to follow up on that, we brought up the and maybe for the benefit of some members of the audience, you know, could you explain a little bit more about, you know, what the start to treaty is and why it's so important and how it fits in with, you know, kind of the broader conflict here? Oh, well, I guess I can, I can start unless Tom wants to take this. No pun intended, I'm sure. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Un-totally intended. Well, start stands for Strategic Armed Production Treaty. And it's a long of a series of treaties that have an intellectual and diplomatic lineage that dates back to the Cold War. And they really go all the way back to the 1960s with some efforts of the Kennedy Administration where they put the test ban treaty in. And of course, most famously the acronyms come out of Nixon's efforts with SALT, the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty. So the difference between SALT and START was that START was about we're going to reduce the cap of the number of strategic weapons and what they mean by that is nukes, nukes at a lower level. So we're going to, we're going to, we're going to cut off the arms race, the nuclear arms race. And so the SALT was we're going to limit the development and the START was we're actually going to cut them back. And they, there was a no one which was called SORT and he'll be going into that, but SORT never got ratified and we pulled out of it. But START, START one and two, so this is two that's been cut out. So START two began to be negotiated, I believe with the second Bush Administration, it was implemented by the Obama Administration if I have my dates correct on that. And what Putin has done is he says, you know what, I'm not going to follow the treaty anymore. So this is for something for the political science majors or those interested in it. At the end of the day, Tom mentioned the Treaty of Westphalia. But the Treaty of Westphalia 1648, what it really did is it instantiated the nation-state system that said that nation-states have sovereign power. And so what that means is at the end of the day, if I'm a nation-state and Tom is a nation-state, we cut a deal. At the end of the day, we have that deal. But if I decide, you know what Tom, I don't like you anymore. So I'm just not going to go by the deal because you know what, I'm a sovereign power of the land of man. Well, that's what Putin has done. And so that has always been a kind of a limitation on those people who talk about world government and all that stuff out there is that the greatest limitation is the sovereign system. And so that's what Putin is doing. Yeah, absolutely again, Matt, yes. And the only one thing I would add to that is if you said I apologize, that the START Treaty doesn't talk to tactical nuclear weapons, which is part of Russian war doctrine is the use of tactical nuclear weapons. So right to your point, Matt, you know, Putin picked START II to say, well, I'm going to pull out of this. And of course, that was meant to, I think, obliquely kind of speak to the threat of nuclear war. The other part of that was Russia wasn't following the START II Treaty anyway. Inspections hadn't been going on anyway. So he said, I'm not going to do something that he already wasn't doing. So, but as kind of an info war thing to people who don't pay attention to the nuance of it, it comes off immediately as something that's threatening and oh my gosh, we need to really pay attention here, realizing that it doesn't address the tactical nuclear weapons, which right now are probably most likely to be in play if any nuclear weapon was, and that they weren't following it anyway. So much like the overflight treaty that pulled out of it, Russians weren't following it anyway. Okay. So we've had our previous discussions. We've talked a lot about end games and exit strategies and it seems a little bit maybe premature at this point to talk about particularly given what hasn't changed over the last few months. But has that really changed? Is there kind of any realistic settlement of this conflict that would be mutually satisfactory to all the parties? And if not, where do we go from here? Do we have just another frozen conflict like, I guess arguably we had from 2014 to 2022? Do we have something like South Ossetia again? Or what? And is that something that realistically is going to be acceptable to the Ukrainians at this point? Did you want me to start mad? Yeah, I think that Zelensky said it very succinctly and he said this war started in Crimea and it's going to end in Crimea. And I believe that as far as Ukraine is concerned, the only realistic end game possible here is that Russia is out of the Donbass and it's out of Crimea. And I think the game changer in all of this, certainly those individuals who I've spoken with who say, and here in Germany they talk about, it's time right now for peace talks, is the war crimes issue. I think they are so obvious and so flagrant that they in and of themselves have made any discussion of peace talks really hard to swallow because you would have to sit down at the table with people who clearly committed incredible war crimes in the 21st century. How do you leave that? I guess the world would have to ask itself, is it prepared to say okay to that? That shucks, we shouldn't have done that, but we still get to keep the Crimea in the Donbass and back to the West failure piece. It makes a mockery then of the sovereign state system. And if Russia is allowed to say that its intervention into the Donbass was because of Russian ethnic presence. Let's look at all the borders that are going to change in Africa when the colonial powers set up borders that split ethnic groups. Those are now all coming to question. So the only realistic end state I see for myself is I believe what Zelinsky says, the world ended in Crimea when Russia leaves and leaves the Donbass. I think the outcome, I don't think we would be prepared for the outcomes if we allowed the present situation to stand. And what would occur in other parts of the world? What door we would open there? Yes, I agree with all of that. I agree with everything Tom said. I think that you open up a Pandora's box when you allow, if you will, the Russian way of war to be the accepted way of war. And now I would say this, I do think it's possible, Chair Lawrence here brought up something that I think it's possible that they could get into a kind of freezing of lines like they did between 15 and 21 with limited incursions on each side. And that's sort of, I think that could happen again mostly out of the extent because of the exhaustion of the field armies in play. But that is not a long-term solution. I mean, unless you want to say that the Korean War has been a long-term solution, well, we've been sitting down standing at artillery pieces facing north and south against each other now since 53. So I do think you could have something like that, but the difficulty is that if you have that, you're always going to have an opening for a new round of offensive and counter-offensive. You don't actually have, unless you can negotiate a truce, but if President Zelensky sticks with his guns, and I think Tom is right on this, President Zelensky does not want to barter away Crimea, and he doesn't want to bar away the Donbass or really any part of Ukraine because to a large extent, he himself has, so we've talked a little bit about how Putin is tied to this war politically, but this is true of Zelensky as well. Zelensky's power base within his own country is that he has been able to rise above defray of politics and be the war leader who holds the nation together to include even the people who otherwise stand kind of opposed to him, the opposition parties and whatnot, and the former leaders and so forth. So he also is between a rock and a hard place on all of this, but again, I think if you have exhaustion on both sides, which you could definitely get to, now short of that, could the West get tired of buttressing the Ukraine? That's certainly a possibility, especially if there's a strong movement of the peace forces in Europe and yes, the peace wing of the Democratic Party, and if that is particularly if President Biden feels that his reelection is contingent on that, you might see if you see a retreat of the West on this, now this is a little bit speculative. I don't think this will happen, but if you did, then that would be a gateway for the Russians to go in, and particularly if they successfully build up, if they can build up an alliance with some of the other Belarus and Moldova and even bringing in monies and stuff from the Chinese. So the problem with wars is that they don't start well and they very often don't end well, and no matter what happens within this, there's going to be acrimony on both sides, and even if we do find a way to cease this conflict, it might just serve as a predecessor for a setting condition for a wider conflict that could come down, but a lot of us are going to come down, do we have support? Will we continue to support the Ukrainians? Will Putin be able to hold the oligarchs on his side? And either one of those goes a different way, you could have a different outcome. Yeah, if I could, and thanks for your comment, that makes great good sense. And as you're talking, it made me think of one, we look at North Korea, South Korea, and a demilitarized zone where the case may be. It would be interesting to at least have the discussion of stabilizing the, again, not giving up territory, but we'll just say, okay, as of this day, Crimea and the Donbas, Putin's already annexed the Donbas, so he's calling that Russian territory anyway, is that we go ahead and stop here, and the EU fast tracks Ukraine into the European Union, and we look at Ukraine as a de facto NATO state anyway. It's a NATO state and everything but name, and we fast track its NATO status, and now then that line is stabilized because any crossing over it will trigger Article 5 of the NATO treaty, and then figure out how we deal with Crimea and the Donbas, Luhans regions, because then, right to your point, Matt, if it, as a NATO state, Putin wouldn't dare cross the line. But if we allow it to stabilize, and Ukraine just to simply be continued to Ukraine, well, that's just a matter of getting my forces ready to go again at another point, and I think we need to, in the West, need to just realize Ukraine is right now a de facto NATO state, and quit talking around like it's something else, like it's our hired help defending the West, when in fact it's clearly in the West. And so first step, fast track EU membership, second, fast track NATO membership, and then use Article 5 to stabilize the situation that then could set up meaningful peace talks. Yeah, I think just kind of, as we were discussing this, I was kind of thinking through other kind of frozen conflicts, right? I'm thinking about, for example, Cyprus, right, where there actually is the precedent of the EU admitting a divided state, and although the NATO thing isn't really quite the same thing there, essentially it would be a proxy conflict between two NATO powers, so neither of them really has much of an incentive to reignite that war. And then Bosnia, for example, where you have a de facto Serbian state and a de facto uneasy alliance between the Karats and the Muslims, is either of those things kind of the model here for what could come about, where essentially you have a de facto autonomous Donbass and Crimea that isn't legally part of Russia, but kind of, you know, is. But again, at the end of the day, right, the Ukrainian state is acceptable to the West, is that acceptable to Putin, right? You know, because clearly Putin has taken out the issue. This is as Russian as Moscow, right? And of course, you know, as long as he has taken out that, you know, the Donbass is as Ukrainian as living, right? So, yeah, I don't know. Yeah. I think, I think, as you said, the Balkans provide us with a framework that we could look at. Again, yeah, yeah, we would have to, we'd have to, you know, play with it a little bit, but I think there's a framework there that we could look at and certainly have colleagues in the Slovenian Ministry of Defense. And this is one of the things we talk about is looking at the Balkan Wars and current situation in the Balkan states as a kind of a model for what we might be able to push forward in Ukraine. I would agree. The only thing that I would say on it, that the challenge is going to be, you could box Serbia in, which is what NATO did, led by the U.S. You can't do that with Russia. And that's going to be where the rubber meets the road. That's going to be the problem. But I completely agree that could be a potential way out of this, autonomous regions, you know what, a no-man zone. We do stuff like this all for God's sakes. We still got the Egyptians and the Israelis separated from the October war. So I mean, we've done this before. We could do this again. But the difficulty is that it's Russia. Russia's big and Russia's powerful. That's a good point. I guess, as you said, like I said, we do have plenty of these frozen conflicts. Some work out better than others perhaps. But yeah, I hadn't even thought of the Israeli-Egypt Sinai sort of situation, right? But yeah, since we've arrived at the end of our evening, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your perspective, I guess, I'd like to thank you for both taking time out of your evenings, or I think in the top case, I didn't realize you were in Germany early morning at this point. Had I realized you were joining us from five time zones away or six time zones away, I would have thought about a different time. But thank you, Tom. Thank you, Matt. And thank you all for joining us. If you do have any questions for our panelists, feel free to email us. Happy to answer any questions you might have. Not as lively an audience as usual, but that's partly course, I guess, sometimes. And Dr. Beek also, I don't know if you saw in the chat, thank you both for your participation as well. Just one little piece of housekeeping before we adjourn for the evening. Our next discussion event, we have it planned for two weeks from Thursday. So a little bit of a time difference. So it's going to be Thursday the night. We're going to be talking about state politics. The lineup is not quite set yet, but state politics is going to be the main topic as we approach the end of the legislative session in the next few weeks. So I know that Dr. Lester is definitely going to be participating and I believe Dr. Hall will also be participating as well. We'll see if anybody else will be joining us as well for that. But hopefully y'all will join us as well as audience members and audience as well. And I'd like to thank you all for taking time out of your all's evenings. And as has been the case for earlier, discussion events will be posting us on our YouTube channel later on as soon as the trans coding and all that good stuff takes place, which probably be sometime tomorrow is when I get that posted. And you can find our past videos including our past discussion events on Ukraine. I think we've had two or three now already on our YouTube channel, which is just youtube.com slash at sign MGA Pulsai, which is also our short handle on other social media as well. We're also at MGA Pulsai on Facebook and Twitter as well. So thank you all again and thank you all for joining us and we'll see you hopefully a couple of weeks. That's good. Take it easy. Have a good evening. Good night. Thank you for participating everybody. Take care. Thank you.