Category: Briefings

Putin Plays Trump Again Not Showing Up For Farcical “Peace” Talks in Istanbul

We begin with a former US Ambassador to Ukraine who recently returned from that country under relentless Russian attack with 9 civilians killed yesterday by a missile that hit a bus. Following the farcical “peace” talks in Istanbul we discuss how Trump is trying to save face announcing a phone call with Putin on Monday morning after having been played by Putin with the likelihood he’ll never get the so-called “peace” deal he wants between Putin and Zelensky until Trump puts pressure on Putin which he appears incapable or afraid of doing. Joining us is Ambassador Steven Pifer, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He served as deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and special assistant to the president and senior director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia on the National Security Council. He is the author of a number of books including The Eagle and the Trident: U.S.—Ukraine Relations in Turbulent Times and Averting Crisis in Ukraine. And he has an article at Brookings “Is a deal really emerging on Russia-Ukraine?”

A Report From Kyiv on How Much Ukrainians Want Peace But Not Surrender on Putin’s Terms

Then we go to Kyiv and speak with Tamar Jacoby, the Kyiv-based director of the Progressive Policy Institute’s New Ukraine Project. She was a senior writer and justice editor at Newsweek and, before that, the deputy editor of the New York Times op-ed page. Now a regular contributor to Forbes.com, she is the author Displaced: The Ukrainian Refugee Experience and has an article at The Washington Monthly, “Zelensky’s Big Istanbul Gamble” and we discuss how much the Ukrainians want peace but will not accept surrender on Putin’s terms.

The Death Toll In Gaza Reaches 53,272 As Trump Plans to Send a Million Gazans to War-torn Libya

Then finally, with a ground invasion underway and a new round of bombing in Gaza raising the Palestinian death toll to 53,272 while the Trump administration works on plans to deport a million Gazans to war-torn Libya, we will speak with Omar El Akkad, an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager, and now lives in the United States. He is a two-time winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award and the Oregon Book Award for fiction and his books have been translated into thirteen languages. His debut novel, American War, was named by the BBC as one of one hundred novels that shaped our world, and his latest book, just out, is One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.