rick that the kremlin is upset at the
prospect of finland and sweden joining
nato and now the u.s has come out in
support of them becoming members how do
you think this changes putin's calculus
since nato expansion is the opposite
of what he wants
yes jonathan you put it well i mean all
of the things that putin was trying to
avoid he has brought down on himself uh
the expansion of nato uh finland and
sweden sweden has been neutral jonathan
for two centuries finland has been
neutral since world war ii what has
catapulted them into nato vladimir putin
invading ukraine and so he is causing
all the things that he didn't want he's
reaping the whirlwind um and as your
very good uh warm-up said i mean the war
isn't going well for him
you know putin and you know
yeah the war isn't going well and his
military is still not making significant
gains on the battlefield and suffering
huge losses uh 27 000 dead soldiers
according to ukrainian pres
president zielinski so what
possibilities
does putin have
to end this conflict
and are they narrowing
well
truth is the first casualty of war
jonathan as we know so it's hard to know
uh how many uh russian soldiers have
been killed how many ukrainians have
been killed both sides uh tend to
exaggerate the fact is now that he's
concentrating on the donbass region and
getting a kind of a land bridge to
crimea that does give the outlines of a
possible settlement um you know the the
ukrainian forces have been valiant
pushing him out of kiev uh pushing him
out of the north of the country and so
now there will be eventually some kind
of negotiation over that region and and
hopefully uh the two sides will be able
to to come to some agreement i thus far
the russians haven't really been
negotiating in good faith but the worse
the war goes for putin the more likely
he is to negotiate
rick i to get you on one more thing
there are rumors about putin's health
that have been circular circulating
inside putin's inner circle michael
weiss obtained audio of a russian
oligarch telling a western businessman
that putin is very ill with cancer let's
listen to weiss on what that information
might mean
if this is the truth well wow
if this oligarch is talking out of his
hat speculating
you know idly doing kind of remote
diagnosis the way that a lot of people
are quoted in the tabloid press are
doing okay
or number three and perhaps most
tantalizing of all
if this is some cleverly cooked up piece
of disinformation that russian elites
have disseminated into the west and also
within moscow itself in the sort of
inner sanctum of the russian government
then it suggests that it's designed to
make putin look vulnerable and weak and
perhaps susceptible uh to a coup
um i mean rick you were in government
u.s officials are obviously aware of the
rumors how do how do they evaluate these
claims about putin and frankly does it
matter in terms of policy calculations
well jonathan you've heard the rumors
it's like you know rumors within rumors
like russian nesting dolls that's kind
of a classic
kremlinology um and of course you know
there has been speculation about this
before the fact that putin sits
15 or 20 feet away from people during
covert he obviously doesn't want to get
covered maybe his immune system is
compromised i saw the other day the
annual hockey game that he participates
in he didn't participate in it so the
people are reading the tea leaves but um
it is the sort of thing that the u.s
intelligence services i'm sure are are
investigating i'm sure they have a
little more data than we have but but in
the short term it doesn't really make
much of a difference because he's going
to execute this work he wants to come
out and save face and try to come home
with some kind of victory but even uh
his speech on the the great uh
um patriotic war day may 9 was very
muted he didn't claim victory he didn't
uh he tried to link what's going on in
ukraine with what the russians
sacrificed in world war ii and they're
sacrificing again now
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you