This is Jacobin Radio. I'm Susie Weissman. On today's program, we talked to Ukrainian

expert, Buftham Kravchenko, who's just back from Kiev, to get his view of the state

of Russia's war on Ukraine from the ground. We're 151 days or 5 months into the Kremlin's

irrational, brutal, and reckless invasion. And the mission and goals have shifted. Russian

no longer pretends it is de-nazifying Ukraine. It now argues in favor of erasing Ukrainian

national identity and forcing Ukrainians to be Russians. Analysts in the West, particularly

in Europe with their economies hurt by reduced flows of Russian natural gas and rocketing

energy prices wreaking havoc on their economies in the midst of a blistering heat wave. See

Russia's scorched earth war conduct and will to persist despite heavy losses as a sort of

stalemate, if not a Russian victory so far. So the pundits and analysts say Ukraine should

see territory to get a ceasefire because Russia has the initiative. The view from Ukraine,

as our guest book on Kravchenko reports, is that Russia is losing this war, has wasted

thousands of lives and is running out of troops and more material. Despite their huge costs

and losses, Russia is getting more aggressive and brutal, as irrational as that may seem.

Ukrainians in the occupied territories of the Donbass region have been forcibly deported

to Russia or sent to filtration camps. The economic and climate consequences of the war

are already apparent, but at least the immediate threat of a catastrophic global food crisis has

been staved off by the agreement brokered on Friday to allow the export of millions of tons of grain

that have been blockaded from Black Sea ports. We're going to get booked on Kravchenko's

assessment and analysis of the current situation and prospects when our program returns in just a

moment. This is Jacobin Radio, I'm Susie Weissman. We're now five months into Russia's brutal war

against Ukraine. That's 151 days. Russia has control of the Donbass region and is expanding its

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