No Way Out: Why Negotiations Won’t End the War Soon

In this episode, Dmitri Alperovitch talks with historian and Russia expert Mark Galeotti about: - Whether Putin is capable of compromising his war aims in any potential future negotiations with Ukraine - The real reason for why he chose to invade Ukraine - Why he went ahead and annexed territories he didn't even have full control over - The similarities between Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 - Why Prigozhin and Kadyrov are no threat to Putin's hold on power - Whether the sanctions and export controls are having much of an effect on the Russian economy and society - How the people in Russia's intelligence services are reacting to the war (and what happened to SVR's Naryshkin) - Why Putin is incapable of holding incompetent leaders accountable - Why the bombastic rhetoric from Russian nationalist shock jocks on state television is not a portal into Kremlin's policy - And much more!