Vladimir Putin’s Russia may just be the first country in history to claim to be annexing another country’s territory even as its own troops were simultaneously and hastily retreating from that very territory.
That is exactly what happened over the past week when the Federation Council formally passed legislation incorporating four occupied Ukrainian regions into Russia – while Ukraine’s armed forces were in the process of liberating large swaths of those territories at a very impressive clip.
And as Russia continues to suffer humiliating defeats on the battlefield and Putin faces unprecedented criticism on the home front, the Kremlin leader is appearing increasingly unhinged and is resorting to one of his favorite go-to tactics: attempts at nuclear blackmail.
The war in Ukraine is entering a perilous and unpredictable new phase. And on this week’s Power Vertical Podcast, host Brian Whitmore speaks with Angela Stent, a professor at Georgetown University, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and author of the book Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest, and Maria Snegovaya, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, a Fellow at the Illiberalism Studies Program at the George Washington University, and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security to unpack it all.
SHOW NOTES
The opening audio clip is from a speech by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Oct. 4. The full speech can be accessed here. The translation of the opening clip is as follows:
“Today we’ve got some good news both from the frontline and from the diplomatic front.
First: the Ukrainian army is carrying out a pretty fast and powerful advance in the south of our country as part of the current defense operation. Dozens of settlements have already been liberated from the Russian sham referendum this week alone. In Kherson region, Kharkiv region, Luhansk region and Donetsk region altogether.”
An excerpt from Angela Stent’s book, Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest, which was discussed in the episode can be found here. The revised edition of the e-book with new chapters on the invasion of Ukraine can be found here.
An article by Timothy Snyder on how the Ukraine war might end that was referenced in the episode can be found here.