Podcast episode

Charles Lane: It sounds like both of you encountered a lot of grim realism. David, you interviewed President Zelensky.

David Ignatius: [I asked him] “what happens if you don’t get the aid from Congress?” And he gave a straight-up answer: We will have to begin to pull back. And he pulls out a piece of paper and he draws me a little map of the battlefront, and he says, “Here’s our line. The only way we can preserve this line is to is to shrink it, because we don’t have enough artillery to protect the whole one, which means we’re going to have to retreat step by step.”

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It was really extraordinary to hear him say that and then to hear him say, “The only way we really can protect ourselves is to do to the Russians what they’re doing to us. They’re taking out our energy grid. They’re trying to just blackout our country. We’re going to have to do the same thing to them. They have to feel that same fear, or we have no deterrence against their weapons.”

Lane: With Speaker Mike Johnson trying to wrangle the far-right anti-Ukraine Republican members, tell us what you were hearing from Ukrainians about that point. How closely are they paying attention, and what is their assessment is of how they would fare, with or without that military aid?

Jim Geraghty: I got a very direct quote from a woman I spoke to who’s worked as a translator. I asked if she had a message for Americans, what would [she]........

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