Mike Baker

Have you heard anything in terms of the Russian military having to go through a conscription in order to keep up the personnel count, get enough bodies to throw into this?

Yeah.

So I think that's what they're going to try to do.

I'm sorry, George, when you say that Putin is sensitive to that fact, he's sensitive to the idea of civil unrest, I assume.

so okay you see that see now that's the sort of insight right that you don't get anywhere but here on the pdb which is that part of the putin's problems is this balls aren't big enough um that's going to make headlines and make its way back to the kremlin he's going to be very upset to hear this uh look there's there's so much more to go into on this um i guess if i could finish up with one question i know we have to be mindful of time

when we talk about losing control of the population or an unhappy population or civil unrest or whatever we want to call it, where does that stand, right?

We're into a grinding fifth year, right?

How long does the population put up with this?

And are you seeing any cracks?

We're hearing some reports about elites being very upset because they've been having their assets confiscated, sometimes under the theory of anti-corruption battles, but basically just it's a money grab because they need the revenue to feed the war machine.

Are you hearing anything about about this?

Somebody should do an investigation and figure out what happened to Progozhin.

How did that plane fall out of the sky like that?

That was shocking.

I can't imagine who might have been responsible for something like that.

It's not a question there, George.

I know you're looking at me like, where are you going with that?

Listen, I know you've got to get moving.

As always, we really appreciate you coming on, sharing your insight, your expertise.

I don't think this conflict is finding an off-ramp anytime soon, so I know we'll be giving you a call back here shortly.