Discover the twists in the narrative as we unveil the chilling ISIS-K attack in Moscow and the subsequent political maneuvering of the Putin regime. Dana Lewis on the Kremlin's finger-pointing at Western nations and the manipulation of public perception. We expose the Kremlin's tactics, including the use of torture by Russian security services, and reveal the true culprits behind the mayhem. The discussion also spotlights the initial ISIS-K responsibility claims, which were quickly overshadowed by the Russian state media's distorted stories.
Venture into the ideological motivations driving Russia's aggressive stance in Ukraine with Matthew Schmidt, associate professor of national security and political science.
And, Joseph Shelze from The Soufan Center.
Discover the twists in the narrative as we unveil the chilling ISIS-K attack in Moscow and the subsequent political maneuvering of the Putin regime. Dana Lewis on the Kremlin's finger-pointing at Western nations and the manipulation of public perception. We expose the Kremlin's tactics, including the use of torture by Russian security services, and reveal the true culprits behind the mayhem. The discussion also spotlights the initial ISIS-K responsibility claims, which were quickly overshadowed by the Russian state media's distorted stories.
Venture into the ideological motivations driving Russia's aggressive stance in Ukraine with Matthew Schmidt, associate professor of national security and political science.
And, Joseph Shelze from The Soufan Center.
So you know, that's where I'm at. I think it's ISIS-K. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I do not think it's connected to Ukraine, but I'm sure we'll get into that specialization, specifically the wars in Chechnya and unrest in Dagestan, as well as the Russian involvement military operations in Syria hi everyone and welcome to another edition of Backstory.
Speaker 3:I'm Dana Lewis. In Vladimir Putin's Russia, the dark days of Kremlin-driven disconnect from reality only seem to go from bad to bizarre. Almost the moment the news broke that four terrorists had opened fire at innocent concertgoers in a Moscow music hall it's called Kroka City you could almost anticipate the Putin regime would somehow implicate the West. Even though ISIS-K was claiming responsibility for the attack not their first against Russian targets. Even though Putin himself had been warned by American intelligence that an attack might be in the offing, he brushed it off, claimed it was an attempt to interfere in Russian elections, and critics say he bears the full weight of responsibility for allowing the attack to happen. Never mind the facts, putin, the FSB, security service, russian program media all blaming America and Britain and Ukraine On this backstory. The Soufan Center's Joseph Schelze walks us through the background leading up to this ISIS attack. But first, security analyst Matthew Schmidt. All right, at the University of New Haven, associate Professor of National Security and Political Science is Matthew Schmidt. Welcome, matthew.
Speaker 1:It's a great pleasure to be here, Dana.
Speaker 3:It's a great pleasure to talk to you because you're also a strategic analyst in foreign affairs, us politics, security, military matters and you've taught strategic and operational planning at the Army's Command and General Staff College and I mean that's certainly worthy of a mention, so it's great to have you. Can I kick it off very quickly, asking you what is your take on the attack in Russia on the Crocus City Music Hall? Is there any doubt in your mind that this was ISIS? Kay?
Speaker 1:No, the great open sourcesource intelligence group Bellingcat, their actually Russian affiliate, went out of their way pretty much immediately after the attack and found a series of photographs of the four suspected assailants in Crocus City with other publications from ISIS-K earlier and essentially, has you know in my mind, has identified them as longstanding operatives of ISIS-K. So essentially, has you know in my mind, has identified them as long-standing operatives of ISIS-K. So you know, that's where I'm at. I think it's ISIS-K, absolutely. I do not think it's connected to Ukraine, but I'm sure we'll get into that.
Speaker 3:Here's a front page article, for example, in Moscow's argument and facts, as it calls itself a little loose on the facts, but so quote we know the architects of Crocus attacks and who organized it. Let them burn in hell. All of this about Islamic State is rubbish. Let them tell this to each other other and who they were referring to, as each other is in a front page article where they put up pictures of President Biden, ukrainian President Zelensky, rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister of Britain and the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. What is going on there? Because this media, as you well know, is state managed, so that's a direct marching order from the Kremlin to tie this to Ukraine any way, any how.
Speaker 1:I got to say I'm old enough to remember when Argumenti Effecti was in fact an independent newspaper and did good reporting. So it kind of breaks my heart every time I see these outlets now under the thumb of the Kremlin. This is what Putin's doing, right. He is reaching out and he's going to take advantage of the situation. It's important to, I think, to remember that he took I don't know 12 hours to respond, eight, 12 hours before he came out. He did it by a canned video.
Speaker 1:He didn't make himself available for questions, and this is what happens when you lack a free and independent press, right? Nobody's verifying these things and you have a country that I mean they tortured these guys, right? If they in fact did this, indeed, let them burn in hell. But you and I live in democracies that at least have a pretense towards you know guilty until proven innocent. And when you look at what argument in fact he is saying here, they're not even saying like suspected assailants or accused. They're just flat out saying these guys did it on the basis of no due process. And that's exactly what Putin wants. He wants to amp up this rhetoric.
Speaker 3:What do you make of that? I mean, russia's a brutal society and the security services certainly are. Generally they don't have to account for anything that they do with anybody in their custody. But it is unusual for them to put out those videos, I mean, of them beating these guys, of electrocuting these guys, of cutting off the ear of one of them, who later appeared in the courtroom with the ear bandaged. I mean, that was done for a reason and for effect, it seems to me.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that was. I mean again, those things were filmed by the security services, by uniformed officers, and then leaked. There was no pretense even that this was somehow not supposed to be leaked. It was just put out there immediately and you know, it is out there to drive up war fever. And then there were reports early on that there were anonymous sources coming out of the security services that were saying that internally, the professionals in those services had quickly ruled out Ukraine. That is, they accepted the basic logic that ISIS-K did this.
Speaker 1:Isis-k had plenty of reasons for doing this. They had attacked the Russian embassy last fall in Kabul, russia. This, I thought well, the FSB is saying this, that's pretty unusual. And then it just died. And Putin comes out and gives a speech and doubles and triples down on this is really Ukraine. And then the images come out of these guys being tortured and no one is saying anything negatively about this tortured, and no one is saying anything negatively about this. No one in the press in Russia is saying look, guilty or innocent, we shouldn't be doing this, we shouldn't be treating people this way. And that's I mean, dana, that's the difference between Russia and Ukraine. That's the difference in what people are fighting for really, and I think we don't say that often enough think.
Speaker 3:I think we don't say that often enough. Fair point, um. But at the same time I I tend to think that the russians were furious that their their president, some of them were furious that their president didn't take a warning from the west seriously and discounted it and, in an appearance before the fsb a couple of weeks before, saying it was a provocation and designed to disrupt the elections, essentially. And then they would be furious with the fact that the FSB and the security services allowed this terror attack to happen. So suddenly, you know, they got their men and they beat them senseless, probably with applause from a lot of Russians.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm sure that's true, but I disagree with you, please. I don't think, if I may not, that you would ever stop a professor in disagreeing, even if you didn't may. I do not think that most Russians are blaming the Kremlin. I think that Putin engaged in a very classic response and for most Russians, they have been imbibing this idea that the West is against them, that Moscow is full of spies trying to subvert the world historical order of Russia. Um, and and so I don't think that actually hit very hard, and one of the things I always like to tell people is is they should read Russian fairy tales.
Speaker 1:This is a classic of Russian fairy tales, where essentially bad things are happening and the czar isn't doing anything about it. And so the good, real Russians, right, like the real American, real Brits, somewhere out there in the heartlands of these places, right, Are, are beseeching the czar, come and do something right, and the czar finally hears about it, right, finally learns from honorable advisors um, what's really going on, instead of all the dishonorable advisors who are, who are telling him lies, to, to, to, to cover their rears on this right, and this is a classic of what Putin has done. He's saying it's not me. It's not me, it's other people in the system. If there's a mistake that's going on, it's the defense ministry, it's the security services right, and somebody's had a role there. But once it gets to me, I, the czar, do the right thing and that's the game he's playing right here.
Speaker 3:Although he didn't criticize anybody in this case, not yet, not yet. He's been completely not yet.
Speaker 1:He's been completely supportive of the FSB, I mean he certainly hasn't called them out and hasn't said anything about his own security apparatus. Yeah, I mean you know, you heard again. You heard reports. I think they're true, but they are unverified. As far as I know, that it took an hour for security services to arrive on the scene. But these have all been vague, because in Russian, when you say security services, does that mean like the special troops that show up for these things, or does it mean ambulances and police? And the distinction between these things, which is important to ordinary Russians, isn't clear to me as a Westerner. Where I'm thinking, this means the police and medical personnel.
Speaker 3:I was at Beslan, the hostage-taking of school children in Russia and where 300 of them died. And I can tell you by the, the, by the time the, the, the special um anti-terror units got to the scene and got organized, and got even more disorganized when they than they were in the first place, uh, you know there were already flames pouring out of the building and and, uh, dozens and dozens of kids dead. So I know the idea that they raced to the scene in record time. I've never seen that happen in Russia, but anyway, that's kind of a right-hand turn.
Speaker 3:Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the FSB, said on Tuesday that you know he believed Ukraine, along with the United States and Britain, were involved in the attack on the concert hall. Ukraine, along with the United States and Britain, were involved in the attack on the concert hall, dismissed as nonsense by Britain and others. But I mean this is kind of gone from a hint from Putin that they were heading for the Ukrainian border. But I mean these are pretty direct allegations now, which tends to make me wonder they are going to have to. You know, I hate to use the word respond because they're not. They should be responding to the Islamic State, but they are going to hit Ukraine and possibly Western interests, pretty hard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, back to what I was saying earlier, this idea that somehow some professional cadres inside security services said internally hey, this isn't Ukraine, right, this is ISIS-K. And then reads the political wins and comes out and says what he says. And so now Putin still hasn't come out as hard as Bortnikov or Medvedev or these others, right, so he's letting his surrogates lead the charge on this. But you're right, I mean, now he has to hit hard. So what's he doing? He's obliterating Kharkiv right now. It's terrible, right, he's hit Kiev again.
Speaker 3:And he has to do that, but the terrorists were heading for Belarus. But when he strengthened the border they turned away and maybe they were assist them in going after the Baltics and making a land grab the Swalky Gap leading Lithuania to Kaliningrad. Is this nonsense or, in the wake of the terror attack, does it get a little more traction?
Speaker 1:traction. So 20 years ago, almost probably to the day, I wrote a piece in an obscure journal asking if Putin was pursuing a policy of what was called Eurasianism. What today we talk about is like the Ruskimir, the Russian world right that some listeners might know this term, all of which is to say like inside academic baseball here. I am not a believer in the realist theory of this war. I do not believe this war was started because Putin felt like NATO was a threat if NATO came into Ukraine, because it was already in Estonia and the missiles would hit at the same time from Estonia as they would from anywhere in Ukraine. And so I think that this war is fundamentally ideological and uh thus is not to be deterred easily by sort of the classic realist way of stacking up our guns against their guns and saying we have more or better guns, so so stop, so stop.
Speaker 1:That said, putin isn't stupid, he's, he is not irrational, which is often what people say about world leaders, what they don't like. He's hideous, he's an autocrat, he's all of these things. But he follows a logic. It's his logic and he's he's. It makes sense to him. The trick is to decode that logic please, if you can help me.
Speaker 3:I lived in Russia for 12 years and I've covered Putin since he came to power.
Speaker 1:And here we go. Putin believes, or has come to believe, in a theory called Eurasianism or the Russian world, and this comes from a guy by the name of Alexander Dugin. If you remember, his daughter was assassinated and he was seen as probably being the main target. He wrote a textbook in the 90s called the Fundamentals of Geopolitics, which was this horrible mishmash of stealing things from Carl Schmitt and the Nazis and the Slavophiles in the 19th century and all this kind of stuff, and it basically says that Russia is unique in world history. It's neither European, it's not democratic, it doesn't believe in a pluralist society, it doesn't believe in things like gay rights If you look at Masha Gessen's the New Yorker, she wrote a brilliant book on this about the role that anti-gay rights played in Putin's formation and his ideology it's not Asian right, it's not a kind of Asian despotism, it's something unique and it's religious right.
Speaker 1:So Putin converts in the early 2000s and he imbibes the idea of Russian orthodoxy and this idea that Russia has to survive as a culture, which of course means it has to survive as a country, but it has to survive as a culture in order to impart its ideas of what it means to be human in the future history of the world, right, and so now you have, this theory of Russian culture is under attack and it might be obliterated.
Speaker 3:And that's what this is really about, because the one place that has to be Not a theory, but a propaganda that is spun by Putin and the Kremlin.
Speaker 1:It's propaganda that's spun by him, it's ideology, it's a system of belief, right. And the one place that is essential to this is Ukraine, it's not Poland. He doesn't see Poland as part of this worldview. Poland's west. He doesn't see Estonia as part of it. It's Ukraine, right. So, on the one hand, ideologically that's why he's not going to invade Estonia or Poland or Lithuania Right, it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1:On the other hand, what comes out of this worldview is without Russia's military might, both nuclear and conventional Russia is just a large European state state. It's not a superpower. There's no pretense to it, and Putin's not dumb. So what he's learned from the war is this sort of backwards, ragtag army that started in Ukraine has done pretty damn well and has degraded his military capacity an extraordinary amount. Even if Ukraine is in a bad position right now, russia has lost more than it ever expected in terms of its combat effectiveness. So if he creates a situation to go up against NATO, he's done. He loses that military capacity and he loses the central place that Russia holds in world history, because he no longer has any power. He's just like everybody else, and so that's why I think that he's not likely to do those things, and those are psychological operations that are aimed towards Western publics to force us to not allow our political leaders to give aid to Ukraine more than they are our serious military proposals.
Speaker 3:I was going to ask you. I mean, some of this is designed to make the West and Ukraine come to the negotiating table and accept the annexation of the four regions that he's taken in eastern Ukraine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think that's where we're headed. Just five minutes before I logged on to talk to you, mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, has come out publicly and said he's trying to find a way to fund Ukraine Extraordinary news coming out of here right now. We'll see what happens. I'm not convinced he's going to be able to do it, but in any case, ukraine's been in a bad position all winter and into the spring here. Right, ukraine's been in a bad position all winter and into the spring here, and it's a position where where Russia, especially now, if, using the excuse about Kropotkoye City, they can manage to pull together some kind of offensive, they can. They can take back Kharkiv in that area that that the Ukrainians took back in 2022, then he's in a position to sort of force negotiations Again. I'm not sure the Ukrainians will do it, but I think they're closer to it than they've ever been.
Speaker 3:I could talk to you for hours and I know we don't have hours. So I mean Kharkiv. Today you have missiles slamming into apartment buildings. Today you have missiles slamming into apartment buildings. It looks like, you know, the beginning of the bulldozing from the air of, you know, a major center in Ukraine and it's going to be very tragic. But just to sum up all of this, you know we've talked about how you perceive President Putin and what his long-term objectives are.
Speaker 3:But all the rhetoric this week in the wake of this terror attack and there's been some stunning stuff on Russian television, I mean against the West and from the usual suspects, you know, the Kremlin propagandists. But what is he preparing the Russian public for? Do you think is he just shoring up his support for the war continuing and the support for him and his ability to keep a stranglehold on the power in Russia, or do you think he's about to launch into? He's got his election, he's got his other six years. Do you think he's about to launch into? He's got his election, he's got his other six years. Do you think he's preparing something now, whether that be big mobilization or something else like that?
Speaker 1:I think he's. He's coming out and he's calling a war, war which he hasn't been doing right. He is moving from, uh, from hiding the war from the major russian public and the majority of the russian public, from the majority of the Russian public, by recruiting in the far off areas of Siberia, and I think he's going to start recruiting more heavily in St Petersburg and Moscow regions in the Northwest where the population center is. And he's able to do that because he's going to raise the flag and say if you love your country, come get the people who supported the terrorists that blew up the music hall. And his first move is Russia needs artillery shells too. It needs equipment. It's facing an equipment and ammo bottleneck in 2025. So there's pressure on it to do what it can this year before it faces that bottleneck, and it needs people just as bad as Ukraine does, and so he can't do a lot until he gets those things. No-transcript.
Speaker 3:Matthew Schmidt, the associate professor at University of New Haven. I wish I was one of your students and could sit in some of your lectures, because you've got a lot of insight, and thank you so much for sharing some of that. It's really tremendous.
Speaker 1:It's been such a pleasure. I'd love to come back. Deal.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Matthew.
Speaker 1:All right.
Speaker 3:Joseph Shelsey is a research fellow at the Soufan Group focusing on military affairs and operational analysis. Joseph, that this attack is classic ISIS-K and that the group has for a long time had a bone to pick with Russia. Can you lay that out for me a little bit?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's absolutely true, Dana, and thank you for having me. Russia has for a long time been in the crosshairs of the jihadist movement, starting around the 1980s, you know, during the Soviet Union days.
Speaker 3:The invasion of Afghanistan was a major trigger for upset among Muslim communities around the world, Following that general treatment of Russian Muslim minorities within Russia as well as the post-Soviet states, has also been a major motivator and factor driving recruitment and radicalization, specifically the wars in Chechnya and unrest in Dagestan, as well as the Russian involvement military operations in Syria. Yeah, how ironic, by the way, that one of Russia's main fighting forces in Ukraine, certainly in the initial year, were Chechen fighters that were pledging their allegiance to President Putin. You'd think that that would be the last group that would be on the tip of the Russian spear in Ukraine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, it is a strange alliance, but I think with the right amount of patronage networks and then lining of pockets, a lot of different things are possible, and I think that's what we saw played out in the Ukraine there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, many talks. How credible are claims on ISIS websites that ISIS carried out this attack at the K the crocus music Hall, this horrendous attack on Friday?
Speaker 2:I mean I would say that they're. They're credible um. This is consistent with um Isis Central's um ideology and specifically with isk is Islamic State Khorasan Provinces tactics, techniques and procedures. This fits with their goals. They've targeted Russia before, not only in propaganda, but with suicide bombing against the Russian embassy in Kabul. So it absolutely tracks and it's not, I wouldn't say, surprising. Maybe it's surprising that the Russian security services, despite the warning of the US government, were not able to disrupt the plot. That may be surprising, but no, I would say those are credible claims.
Speaker 3:Well, let's address that. Why do you think that the Russian security services so badly failed here? Not to mention the fact that the president himself stood in front of the FSB and said you know, the warnings from the US in Britain are a provocation designed to disrupt our elections. So I mean he undermined it from the beginning.
Speaker 2:Sure. Yeah, I think that it's a combination of factors. I think hubris was part of it. I think their overconfidence and their ability to identify and disrupt plots within Russia identify and disrupt plots within Russia. I also think there's an obvious level of mistrust between the US, russia and the UK, and that's understandable given the circumstances. The other thing is that most of their security establishment is no longer focused on domestic terrorism, jihadist terrorism within Russia. They've shifted their focus almost entirely to Ukraine, and so it's not beyond the pale. It's not out of the question that something like this would have been missed by a security service that's extremely overtaxed and distracted, not to mention the number of casualties that a lot of the first responders with units, for example, like Roskopardiya Special Forces the first responders to an incident like this typically the casualties that those units received in the opening days of the war in Ukraine. So a lot of the folks that would have been addressing this threat prior to execution and then post-execution they're no longer around or they're focused elsewhere.
Speaker 3:So in any other society they would be calling for the heads of government and for, certainly, the security services heads for failing here. So is there some smoke and mirrors here as to why? Does that answer part of the question as to why Putin immediately started accusing Ukraine and the United States and Britain of carrying out this attack?
Speaker 2:I'd say that's probably part of it, it is. I mean, on top of the tragedy of it, it's an enormously embarrassing event for President Putin and for the Russian security services. So it is absolutely reasonable to expect them to try to react in a way that would save face for them or distract from the intelligence failure that led to this. And, of course, who else to blame than first the Ukrainians and followed by the, followed by the U? S and the UK?
Speaker 3:I guess, knowing Russia the way I do, that I see some of this is quite ominous, because not only will they try to save face by doing this, by blaming Ukraine, um but I would suspect that there will be some pretty serious payback payback in Russian terms initiated against I don't know, I don't want to say Western targets, but certainly Ukraine itself, to satisfy the anger within Russia. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 2:I don't see a direct path for escalation as a result of this in the war in Ukraine beyond what has already been pursued by the Russian state. I think what is feasible and kind of matches up with what you're saying is that there's absolutely going to be internal crackdowns as a result of this In a country where it's already very, very difficult and potentially fatal to be political opposition. It's going to capitalize on this one as well, um to institute further crackdowns on political opponents and critics as well as, um you know, the muslim community at large and within russia.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know it's hard to imagine him tightening the screws any more than he already has. But yeah, it may. It may provide some fuel for the Kremlin now, after the re-election, which there was already a lot of speculation anyway. And now you know, add in this that Russia will go to a much bigger mobilization to try and just overwhelm Ukraine in. You know what people are speculating could be a summer offensive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that that's something that's been in the cards for a while and, yeah, like I said, they're not going to let this. The security establishment and Putin's regime are not going to let this crisis go to waste, and so if this is yet another talking point that they can use to justify what will be an unpopular move to pursue another round of mobilization, they will use this to justify it in some ways. However tenuous that link is, they will try to draw that either through direct statements or through parroting in the media.
Speaker 3:Can the tide be turned here? I mean, we're past a failed counteroffensive by Ukraine, largely failed. The Russians through the winter now are gaining some ground, maybe not as quickly as Putin would like everybody to believe, but they're certainly chipping away at Ukrainian dug-in positions. Is there a danger you think that Russia can break through Ukrainian lines if this ammunition and Western support isn't very quickly forthcoming?
Speaker 2:Well, there's absolutely a danger. There's a risk of it, and the longer that Western support, lethal aid, is delayed, the more that risk increases. I think that the Ukrainian military is the Russians' favor on the battlefield and I'm worried about the amount of ammunition stocks, equipment, vehicles that the Ukrainians have in reserve, their ability to rotate forces off of the front lines for rest as well as for additional training lines, for for rest um as well as for for additional training um, and I I'm I'm also concerned about the uh, the lack or the absence of a significant fortified line to buttress the ukrainian defense um, akin to what we saw the russians do with the surovikin line. Something like that on the Ukrainian side doesn't exist at the same scale and with the talking points largely surrounding a shift towards a defensive posture for this year for the Ukrainians, something like that will be necessary, if not vital.
Speaker 3:Can I ask your read Joseph Shelsey on some of the threats that some of the Russian parliamentarians have made former President Medvedev have made to the Baltics. And then now you have today President Lukashenko of Belarus talking about threatening the Baltics and that Belarus military potentially participating in a land grab to link Russia and Belarus to Kaliningrad it's called the Suwalki Gap Sure and my question maybe has two parts to it and that is is that a distraction? And my question maybe has two parts to it and that is is that a distraction? Is that meant to threaten the West like nuclear weapons do, and say you know there better be a peace deal at some point here. You better recognize the land we've taken in eastern Ukraine, or are they serious? I mean, do you think that they may, may push um and try to go against nato? These are nato countries that's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, crossing the suwalki gap would be, uh, would trigger article 5, which would have a whole cascade of consequences for for russia and and its allies um, belarus among them, and they're aware of that, I have to believe.
Speaker 2:I think that there are a couple of reasons for statements like this.
Speaker 2:I've heard it described specifically about Medvedev is that he's kind of a he's used to test some of the more ridiculous sounding and he's used to test some of the more ridiculous sounding policy ideas that come out of the Kremlin or that are circulating in the halls of the Kremlin, and he's someone that can push these ideas just to see what kind of reaction they get from the public, from international audiences. So I think there's an element of that. But I also think there's a deterrent element. It is posturing to show, hey, we do take this seriously, russia has the capability to close the Swahili gap in the near term, question of whether or not they can retain that territory in the face of a NATO response. So it's deterrent in that way and it shows a degree of capability or menace, I think. And then the other piece is it communicates to a domestic audience. I think that the Russian, you know Vladimir Putin's base wants to see a strong Russia, and statements like those support that image of the Russian state and of themselves.
Speaker 3:So just to follow up and finish, really, you say that they could probably take the Swahili gap and then it would take NATO some time to respond, and whether they could hold it or not, whetherussians could hold it or not, is a question. I mean, this has been talked about for years. It's a very likely scenario. Why has, why has nato not built a better defense there so that there's no way that the Russians would even attempt it? I mean, it's almost like there's an invitation by lack of NATO muscle forward deployed.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's the benefit of having a nuclear alliance. You don't need to rely on the same degree of forward manpoweri Gap. But it does inform NATO's disposition and its policy of defense. Nato doesn't expect to defeat an initial Russian incursion into NATO territory. It's not realistic. Look at the Baltic states. They expect to delay it, disrupt it and then have the logistics capacity and base in order to receive and move onward material manpower in order to counterattack and reclaim that territory.
Speaker 3:Joseph, chelsea, joseph, good to talk to you again. I really appreciate it and I've asked you to speculate on a lot of stuff and it's hard, but that's kind of the lay of the land right now. With Russia, it's hard to know where they're heading and what they intend to do and I guess everybody has to sit back and kind of anticipate the what ifs and I appreciate you entertaining some of that. Yeah, sure, happy to do it. And that's our backstory on Russia and the ISIS-K terror attack. You can feel the war in Ukraine is about to get worse in the coming months, mostly civilian areas rudely being targeted by Russian missiles, and the funding to enable Ukraine to fight back is still stalled in Washington. I'm Dana Lewis. Thanks for listening to Backstory Backstory, by the way, also available on my YouTube channel. Share the podcast please. No-transcript.