Year Three of the Ukraine War, With Miriam Elder and Carla Anne Robbins

LINDSAY:
Welcome to The President's Inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States. I'm Jim Lindsay, director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week's topic is year three of the Ukraine war.

With me to discuss where the war between Russia and Ukraine is headed in its third year are Miriam Elder and Carla Anne Robbins. Miriam is the Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council. She worked as a foreign correspondent in Russia from 2002 to 2003, and again from 2006 to 2013, reporting first for the Moscow Times and then for the Guardian where she served as the Moscow bureau chief. Miriam also has been the founding world editor BuzzFeed News and an executive editor at Vanity Fair. 

Carla is a senior fellow at the Council where she focuses on national security issues. She's also the Marxe faculty director of the Master of International Affairs Program and clinical professor of national security at Baruch College Marxe School of Public in International Affairs. Carla was the chief diplomatic correspondent at the Wall Street Journal where she was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes for her reporting. She was later deputy editorial page editor at the New York Times. She co-hosts CFR's podcast The World Next Week, which I encourage you to listen to if you don't already subscribe. Miriam and Carla, thank you very much for joining me on The President's Inbox.

ROBBINS:
Thanks, Jim.

ELDER:
Good to be here.

LINDSAY:
Carla, if we may, I will begin with you. Saturday marks the second anniversary of the second Russian invasion of Ukraine. We shouldn't forget that the first phase of the war began in 2014 when Russia seized Crimea and Russian backed separatists seized parts of Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. Where would you say the fighting stands as year three of the war begins?

ROBBINS:
The news isn't great, but it's also really important to remember, as you said, that Ukrainians have been in this a lot longer than we tend to focus on, and they're incredibly tough and they can claim some success as of this week in mid-February. They say they have now sunk or disabled a third of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, twenty-five ships, a submarine, so they're certainly not giving up. But on the ground the news is really grim. Ukrainian forces are really struggling. They're running low on weapons, ammunition, and troops. 

Russia appears to be on the verge of capturing another city in eastern Donbas, one fifteen miles outside the occupied city Donetsk. And this could be the most significant battlefield victory since the failure of the Ukrainian counter offensive. And that should have potentially a major impact on morale. And as we know, Zelenskyy shook up his leadership. It's probably far too soon to blame the new leadership for a setback like that, but it's really grim. Perhaps most important, the major blame is going to lie in Washington because if we fail to come through with that aid, they're certainly not going to be able to win. And it's really a big question how long they can hold on without American aid.

LINDSAY:
I want to come back, Carla, to the question of what's happening in Washington. But before we get there, Miriam, I'd like to get your take as someone who spends a lot of time thinking about Ukraine, about what the mood is in Ukraine today?

ELDER:
I would say the mood is, there's sort of a double way to answer that. On the one hand, Ukrainians remain committed to battling the Russian invasion, the emergence of a broad Ukrainian civic identity that happened after the invasion is strong. The hatred of Russia and its troops, also strong. However, people are getting tired, and tired in a way that not in the term "Ukraine fatigue" that we hear here in DC or in capitals in Europe, but the fact is that Ukrainian men and women have been fighting this war now for two years. As Carla mentioned, they're going to need to call up a lot of reserve troops in order to continue this war. And in the Ukrainian population, they're starting to want to know when is this war going to end? When are people going to come home? So I would say the commitment to the war broadly remains strong, but on a sort of daily level, Ukrainians also have questions.

LINDSAY:
On that point, Miriam, a lot of talk over the past couple of years has been that Ukraine is not interested in negotiating the end of the war. Ukrainians want to fight and reclaim all of their territory, including Crimea. Are we seeing any change in that attitude or is there still a commitment to continuing the fight against Russia?

ELDER:
I think there is broad mistrust of Russia within the Ukrainian population. Zelenskyy of course, passed a decree that banned negotiating with Vladimir Putin because of the understanding that you cannot trust Vladimir Putin or his people as a negotiator. That said, the global conversation, of course it also pierces into Ukraine, but from Zelenskyy himself, we haven't heard a change of heart on that front.

LINDSAY:
Carla, I have to ask you, what do you make of the decision by President Zelenskyy to sack his commanding general? Is it a military decision? Is it reflecting internal politics in Kyiv? Is there a rivalry between the two men?

ROBBINS:
Well, certainly there were reports that there was a rivalry, but this is what you do when you're not winning. The counteroffensive didn't materialize. They barely moved across what was an incredibly difficult situation. And certainly in the Pentagon, people were saying that they didn't listen to the advice of Washington. They spread their troops too thin. And whether you blame the general for that or you blame Zelenskyy for it, Zelenskyy is not lacking in ego, which is one of the reasons the guy stayed and decided to fight. And we saw Lincoln sack generals too when things weren't going well in the Civil War.

LINDSAY:
He sacked several generals until he got one that won the war.

ROBBINS:
And whether this is the right guy to win the war, questionable, we will see. But I think it's a pretty normal development, and there's a lot of... Miriam probably know this better than I would, a lot of reports of major personality clashes between these two big egos, but I think it's sort of a normal development when a war isn't going well.

LINDSAY:
Before I ask Miriam to comment on the potential rivalry between Zelenskyy and his commanding general, do you buy the argument you're hearing coming out of the Pentagon, Carla, that the Ukrainians major mistake was not listening to advice from Washington? Is that a fair critique or a persuasive one?

ROBBINS:
Well, I think Washington bears considerable responsibility as well. The way they sort of dribbled in equipment very slowly from the beginning. I understand what their concern was. They were constantly calculating, "If we give them this equipment, if we give them Patriots, if we give them tanks, will this push Putin into using tactical nuclear weapons?" We were constantly self deterring because we didn't know what Putin was going to do. And the Ukrainians said it was all always too little awfully late. So we do bear responsibility for it. That said, this counteroffensive, it took awfully long for them to get it started and they didn't focus on one spot, which is what the advice that Pentagon was giving. Now, I'm not a military strategist, but everything that I read about it seemed to be not very well calculated.

LINDSAY:
Miriam, what about this question of the rivalry between Zelenskyy and his commanding general? Is there anything to that?

ELDER:
Yes, there's a lot to that. I'll just start by saying though, that the new commanding general, Syrsky, was the one who was in charge of the battle for Bakhmut, which is what American officials were criticizing that that should not be the focus. So I wouldn't see this...

LINDSAY:
And the fight for Bakhmut was a meat grinder. I mean, they lost an awful lot of troops, the Ukrainians did.

ELDER:
They did.

ROBBINS:
Wasted months on it. Yeah.

ELDER:
They did. And this is the man now in charge of the entire military operation. The rivalry between Zaluzhny, the former head of the armed forces, and Zelenskyy is very real. I would recommend to all listeners to read the new book by Simon Shuster called The Showman, which charts Zelenskyy rise and has a lot of juicy details on the emerging rivalry between the two. Zelenskyy is in a very tough spot. He was catapulted into this role as a beloved figure, not just around the world, but in Ukraine, partly because of his major decision to stay and fight. Two years into this war, the shine has come off of that a little bit, understandably, and Ukrainians are wondering if there are other ways that the war can be prosecuted.

And because there is so much admiration for troops and for the sacrifice that they are making on the front lines, the love for the military is incredibly strong, much more than it is for politicians. And so Zaluzhny has emerged as this sort of, I don't want to call it an anti-Zelenskyy, but a non-Zelenskyy figure and what you're seeing if the reporting is to be believed—and again, that book, which I really can't recommend enough—Zaluzhny could have some political ambitions while Zelenskyy is trying to maintain the control that he has had on a day-to-day level for a couple of years now.

LINDSAY:
But Miriam, I would imagine it's going to be difficult for Zaluzhny to launch a political campaign against Zelenskyy, given that Ukraine is not going to have presidential elections as the constitution mandates on March 31, or is something about the change on that score?

ELDER:
No, I don't think Ukraine is in any position to, on a logistical level, carry out elections. You have millions of people still outside the country. You have hundreds of thousands serving along the front lines. So it's not that, but maybe more an out of sight, out of mind kind of thing. We also have to remember that Zelenskyy was upset with Zaluzhny when he did this interview with the Economist a few months back and used the word that Zelenskyy would never want anybody to use. And the word was stalemate. And I think that was sort of the beginning of the end of his time close to the president.

LINDSAY:
And Zelenskyy didn't want Zaluzhny using that word because that led headlines in the news all around the world.

ELDER:
It led headlines and Zelenskyy has this interesting approach. He believes very strongly that people want to side with the victors. When he goes and lobbies in DC or Brussels, or as he did last week in Berlin and Paris. He wants to present himself as a strong person with the wind at his back and using words like stalemate, undermines that.

ROBBINS:
But he's right. I mean, if you track the Washington's enthusiasm for him in the beginning people were arguing, "Well, he is probably going to get wiped out." And then when they had success, great enthusiasm for supporting him. But if you also look at polling data in the United States, historically Americans have been far more tolerant of accepting casualties that people feel that the side is winning. I mean, I think that's sort of documentary true both internationally and domestically.

LINDSAY:
Well, certainly there's a lot of evidence that success breeds success. But one last question to you, Miriam, on Ukraine itself. Ukraine currently does not have military conscription, correct?

ELDER:
It has military conscription, but from the age of twenty-eight up.

LINDSAY:
So why, if Ukraine is faced with an existential threat, aren't we seeing more younger Ukrainians being drafted into the armed services?

ELDER:
There's two ways to answer that. First, the reason, as I understand it, that Ukrainian has left the younger contingent out of the draft. Ukraine has a long road here. It has to repopulate, it has to maintain some semblance of an economy, and they're putting those bets on the young people. And secondly, having this discussion at this point where again, people really are starting to ask questions about coming home or how long these tours are going to last, it would be incredibly politically unpopular.

LINDSAY:
Let's shift capitals and go to Moscow, and I want to tap into the experience both of you have in reporting on Russia. Maybe I'll begin with you, Carla. There have been a number of stories floated in recent weeks about President Putin's newfound interest in negotiating end to the war. You've covered a lot of stories like this. What do you make of them?

ROBBINS:
Don't believe it.

LINDSAY:
Tell me more.

ROBBINS:
Listen, I can't see inside the mind of Putin. There are people with far more experience of covering Russia than I have, but subjecting myself to the Tucker Carlson interview didn't help. Would he negotiate an end to the war in which he got a big chunk of Ukraine? Probably. But if I had to bet what's going on inside of Putin's mind as he's waiting for Donald Trump to win the election and then having it handed to him.

LINDSAY:
Though he recently said that he thought Biden would be a better president for him.

ROBBINS:
I think we refer to that as PSYOPs.

LINDSAY:
Psychological operations, I believe is what you're saying. So you don't think that President Putin was being sincere with that comment?

ROBBINS:
I don't find President Putin particularly sincere about most things. And certainly he has no problems so far taking people out of prison, taking people out of sight of Moscow and throwing them into his military, sending people into a meat grinder from the Russian side as well. But if it is indeed true that Alexei Navalny is dead, why he has done this now at this point, is he nervous of opposition? But we certainly haven't seen an enormous amount of opposition on the street. People know people are dying and he seems to be doing reasonably well politically.

LINDSAY:
Miriam, what is your take on the mood in operation in Moscow at the present moment? I ask that question against the backdrop of the aborted coup last summer by the Wagner Group, Mr. Prigozhin, there was a lot of talk there that perhaps Putin's control on power had been broken or was showing real cracks, but here we now are a month out from the Russian presidential election and it looks to be a formality. Putin has kept the one anti-war candidate who got enough signatures to get on the ballot off the ballot. He seems to be totally in control. How do you assess things?

ELDER:
I think Putin is definitely riding high right now. The advantages with the Russians in Ukraine. He orchestrated the murder of his main political opponent.

LINDSAY:
Here you're referring to Alexei Navalny.

ELDER:
Alexei Navalny.

LINDSAY:
And you were the first Western reporter to do a profile of Mr. Navalny, if I recall.

ELDER:
Yes. It's tragic news. And it was a death that was organized not over hours or days, but over years, and it's horrific that it finally happened.

LINDSAY:
What do you think the significance is of that?

ELDER:
Figuring out how to answer that question is difficult because at this point, the Russian opposition is truly shattered. In the wake of the full scale invasion two years ago, one person after another fled the country. Major independent media outlets were forced into exile. People who remained were thrown into prison, both prominent and your average run-of-the-mill person who might post something on social media being against the war. So the situation is very grim, and I would say that the death of Alexei Navalny, it's almost at this point more on a personal level.

I found the outpouring of grief for his wife and his children, it's so unique in a Russian context. Russia has existed with this tyrannical figure at its helm for over twenty years now. He divorced his wife over a decade ago, and he has never shown with any sort of warmth or family. This is a clinical man who is there to carry out wars and kill his opponents. And so the contrast with someone as jokey and laugh-y and truly a family man like Navalny almost at this point because the opposition is so crushed, it hits harder on a personal level.

LINDSAY:
So Carla, against the backdrop of the death of Navalny, there have also been reports that the Russians intend to build up forces along the NATO border with the Baltics. What do you make of those stories?

ROBBINS:
I don't know. I mean, it seems as if Putin has been reasonably careful up until now. There's the occasional thing that's gone off course and has fallen into NATO territory. I don't know how he's reading wavering American support for Ukraine, whether he wants to test the situation, but I don't know how to read those reports. And I think ultimately Ukraine holds this incredible, mystical, psychological, obsessive place in Putin's imagination. But breaking NATO is also a major obsession.

And testing the alliance has always been...If you had asked me during the Trump years what was the crisis that I most imagined happening, I would've bet him going into one of the Balts and trying to testing the American commitment to Article V at that moment, trying to break NATO in those ways. I don't think Joe Biden is going to waiver on this. I think it's really easy to misread what's going on on Capitol Hill, but breaking NATO certainly is something that he'd like to do as much as gobbling up Ukraine.

LINDSAY:
Miriam, what do you make of these stories about a potential Russian buildup along the border with the Baltic countries: Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, but also Finland, one of the newest members of NATO? Do you think there's truth there? And I ask that against the backdrop of the Russian struggles to prosecute the war in Ukraine, do the Russians have the capacity to surge forces at this moment to the border with the Baltic countries and Finland?

ELDER:
I agree with Carla. I think that breaking NATO is a dream. I left Russia in the summer of 2013. There had been months of anti-Putin protests led by Navalny. It was this incredible moment that was then crushed and my job as a journalist became covering court case after court case after court case. And I thought that Russia was entering a period of stagnation and I was ready to move on to the next story. Months later, Putin seized Crimea and started messing around in east Ukraine, and it was such a stark lesson for me that entropy doesn't exist in these situations. Totalitarian regimes, authoritarian regimes are always pushing ever outward.

So, I would not take anything off the table in terms of whether they have the forces to do it. This is also something to remember where the term meat grinder is correct. This has been Russia's approach to its own military since World War II. Putin does not see his troops as citizens. He sees them as bodies, and he has a gigantic prison population. He has a very poor population elsewhere around the country that he would not think twice about plucking and sending wherever. So I don't know that at this point we can read that there's going to be an invasion of a NATO country in a few months time, but certainly you can't rule anything out and posturing like that is important to Putin.

LINDSAY:
Carla, I want to come back to you and I want to shift the conversation to Washington. Now, you downplayed your credentials on Russia, even though I believe you won your Pulitzer Prize or one of them for your reporting on the Russian financial crisis.

ROBBINS:
Can we correct this impression here? I have teeny, teeny pieces of group Pulitzer Prizes, but thank you very much for mentioning them.

LINDSAY:
Well, you have two more Pulitzer Prizes than I do, so I want to credit you for it, but I know that you know Washington politics really well. So explain to me, are we going to get military aid to Ukraine in the next month or two?

ROBBINS:
I miss being an editorial writer from time to time, and I really missed it yesterday when the Economist had wrote their piece about what's going on in the U.S. House and their subhead was "house of cowards." That just really went to the core of what is going on here. The Senate, after four months of agonizing, finally passed pretty overwhelmingly seventy to twenty-nine, I think it was, a $95 billion standalone Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan funding bill, was $60 billion in this absolutely life and death needed military aid for Ukraine. 

Do you know the prospects in the House? What cliché can I come up with Grim, bleak, dead on arrival is what Speaker Johnson kept saying. He won't move it to the floor without the most Draconian of immigration provisions. And why are there no immigration provisions in it? They tried to do that. They came up with the bipartisan compromise in the Senate, and then former president, GOP front-runner Trump said, "Don't go forward with it because I want to run on it." And then Johnson said, "Okay, everybody out of town until February 28." And as soon as they come back, they got to worry about shutdown issues. So the political prospects for this are pretty, pretty bleak, and I think house of dowards is a really good description of it because it all has to do with Donald Trump's incredible sway over the Republican Party. 

There is a small bipartisan group in the house that is trying to come up with some sort of a compromise, Ukraine-border funding bill. And there are...Jim, you know Washington better than I do, and you certainly know what goes on the Hill. And there is this discharge petition possibility because if they could ever get it to the floor, there is a majority in the House to approve this funding.

LINDSAY:
On that score, Carla, Representative Andy Biggs, Republican from Arizona, who's a big Trump supporter, said that last week that if this bill gets to the floor, it will pass. We all know that. Let's not kid ourselves.

ROBBINS:
Which is why Donald Trump is making his phone calls. I mean, his sway over people seems so transcendent. I think the Sentate, this is not the House, of course, this is the Senate, but Munich Security Conference is going on just as we speak, and Lindsey Graham went every year. He was sort of the cheerleader, the leader of the group, and he didn't go this time. Why didn't he go this time? Because he talked to Donald Trump and they said, "No more globalism, no more internationalism. Let's not talk about Ukraine. And it's all about the border now." So getting this discharge petition is so hard to do, and you know how the rules in the House work. The leadership is incredibly powerful, and do they have enough people who are willing to break with precedent? Ultimately, it's this power. 

Now Johnson's an incredibly weak leader and he's called for votes in ways...He's under rebellion. There are people who are threatening to axe him the way they axed McCarthy. So anything I suppose is possible. But the question I keep asking is if they can't get it through the House, does the White House have a plan B? And you hear people talking about things like, "Well, can the allies buy U.S. stocks? Are there different ways of doing it?" But ultimately the White House doesn't seem to have a plan B other than bringing people to Washington like Olive Scholz and Zelenskyy before that, and basically saying, "Do you really want to hand Ukraine to Russia?" And there are remarkably high number of people in the House who seem to have no problem with it because Donald Trump has no problem with it.

LINDSAY:
Well, in fairness to the White House, if it does have a plan B, it would be very unwise to let the world know what it is. One, it would likely attract a lot of criticism because it would probably involve pushing the envelopes of presidential authority. Second thing, in political terms, it would take the pressure off those very Republicans in the House who you're hoping will decide to break with their leadership and join in it on a discharge petition. So it could be a self-defeating sort of maneuver.

ROBBINS:
That may be true, Jim, but you know that White Houses never keep secrets.

LINDSAY:
Yes, the ship of the state does tend to leak from the top.

ROBBINS:
I'd like to believe that there really is a plan B and we just haven't figured it out.

LINDSAY:
Miriam, what is Kyiv making of what's happening? What is President Zelenskyy's plan B?

ELDER:
Well, you saw last week Zelenskyy making his short tour of western European capitals. I think the Ukrainians are incredibly aware of what's happening in DC, obviously. Don't forget that Zelenskyy's introduction to American politics was being at the center of Donald Trump's first impeachment scandal. So it was a real trial by fire in terms of understanding the mess that is American politics, and it seems that his plan is to try and shore up support in western capitals that are both closer physically to Ukraine and probably more predictable than American politics are in the middle of an election year at that.

LINDSAY:
So as the two of you look forward to how things are likely to unfold, we have a Ukraine that is facing the potential of not getting the levels of American military aid it was hoping and planning for. That it is going to experience depletion of ammunition, particularly of artillery shells. Again, this has been a war in which artillery has featured prominently being fired at levels we haven't seen probably since the second World War. So where do you think we're headed and what are the consequences of where you think we're going? Carla, maybe we begin with you first.

ROBBINS:
As I said to start, the Ukrainians are incredibly tough, and this is a fight for survival, and as Miriam who knows Ukraine far better than I do. They may be tired of the war, but they really hate the Russians and they're going to fight. There's one other factor in here, which is the Europeans who seem to get this far better than many people in our own political system, and they are scrambling to produce more. They certainly can't produce enough, but NATO's procurement agency is scrambling to buy up patriot missiles wherever they can. They've got factories that are producing things twenty-four hours a day. It's not going to be enough. But, I think everybody's trying to figure out a plan B here and trying to hold on long enough to build up defense capabilities and maybe the Ukrainians will be able to hold on and maybe we'll be able to get our act together politically.

LINDSAY:
Carla, you've tipped right from the beginning that you believe it will be a strategic mistake for the United States not to continue supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia. What would your argument be to the skeptics out there, and there are plenty of them, certainly in the Republican Party about U.S. support for Ukraine? Why it's in America's interest to stand with Ukraine?

ROBBINS:
Well, I would make many arguments here from the most basic idea that you don't change borders by force. That's one of the most fundamental rules on which the United Nations was founded, and we may feel really comfortable hiding behind our two oceans, but there's no safety out there in the world. And maybe we can say we don't care about Ukraine, but Ukraine today, Poland tomorrow? Do we really not care about any other country in the world? We tried isolationism before, we tried it with World War I, we tried it with World War II. Look what happens each time. We eventually get dragged in. I think that's a very powerful argument.

I think the other arguments is, it's a flawed democracy, but it's a democracy. And ultimately, do we really want to be on the side of Vladimir Putin? Of all the other autocrats in the world? I mean, this really is a world divided into camps, and I know what side I want to be on. I want to be on the side of NATO. I want to be on the side of democracies. I don't really want to let Vladimir Putin go sweeping across Europe or any place else in the world. And why these people who say, "Yes, we're going to really stand firm against Xi Jinping, but I'm not going to worry about Putin." I truly don't get that one.

LINDSAY:
Miriam, I want to ask you the same general question. Where do you see the war headed and what do you think the consequences are for ending up at that destination?

ELDER:
I think that this year will probably be governed by a push for some sort of a negotiated settlement. That's obviously where the conversation in the U.S. is heading, and I understand the impulse, but I personally think that's a worrisome road to go down. Putin loves nothing more than a frozen conflict. That's how he waged war in Georgia. It's what he was trying to achieve in Ukraine from 2014. As Vladimir Putin made clear in his Tucker Carlson interview, his views haven't changed. He believes that Ukraine needs to live under the thumb of the Russian Empire, and he'll start with Donbas and other parts of Ukraine, but he will use that territory then as a way to continue meddling in Ukrainian politics and in the Ukrainian future.

Although I understand the desire for diplomacy, my concern is that if Ukraine doesn't win some sort of a military victory here, then it's just shunting the problem down the line. But to more concretely answer your question, I think the most important thing here is just to take the lead of what the Ukrainians want. They're the ones fighting this war. They know what they need, and I would just caution DC against necessarily thinking that it knows better. Nobody knows the Russians like the Ukrainians do.

LINDSAY:
Let me ask you, Miriam, and we can conclude on this note, the same question that I asked Carla. What would be your argument to a skeptic who says that it's better to negotiate an unjust peace than to perpetuate a war of attrition, which is going to lead to a lot of bloodshed and death?

ELDER:
My head and my heart always goes back to the Ukrainians who are the ultimate sacrifice, and I think one thing that Putin tries to do all the time, and then you see the sort of MAGA representatives like Tucker Carlson trying to do the same thing, which is trying to write these countries out of history as if Ukraine has no governance or strategy or future of its own, and for that matter, neither do the Baltic states or other parts of Eastern Europe.

So for me, I always lead with giving agency to the Ukrainians and truly following their lead in terms of what they say they want. If a point comes where they really want to negotiate a unjust peace, we can talk about that and then deal with the Russia problem down the road because it will be there down the road. But for now, they're asking for weapons and for other forms of aid, and that's the message to be listened to.

LINDSAY:
On that note, I'll close up The President's Inbox for this week. My guests have been Miriam Elder, the Edward R. Murrow press fellow here at the Council, and Carla Anne Robbins, senior fellow at the Council. Miriam and Carla, thank you very much for joining me.

ROBBINS:
Thanks for having us.

ELDER:
Thank you.

LINDSAY:
Please subscribe to The President's Inbox on Apple Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, wherever you listen and leave us a review. We love the feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode and a transcript of our conversation or available on the podcast page for The President's Inbox on CFR.org. As always, opinions expressed on The President's Inbox is solely those of the host or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions or matters of policy.

Today's episode was produced by Ester Fang, with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks go out to Michelle Kurilla for her research assistance. This is Jim Lindsay. Thanks for listening.