Susan Glasser

It's all very confusing and murky.

And, you know, the smartest read on it I've seen is someone suggesting that this is essentially a play by the Russians, putting it out there both to suggest, well, no, we are actually serious about negotiating with the United States in order to head off.

this sanctions bill that may or may not finally come to a vote in the U.S.

Congress.

But also, it's just a way of embarrassing Trump, I have to say, right?

Not that he gets embarrassed, but showing that despite all of the public displays of frustration with Vladimir Putin, that Trump's personal envoy to the Russians continues to

to be played for a fool by the Russians and to be working on proposals that don't include the other parties to this war.

Well, I mean, Russia has had a deliberate strategy, by the way, in violation of all principles of the laws of international warfare of targeting Russia.

Ukraine's civilian population with long-range missile and drone strikes, and in particular targeting Ukraine's civilian infrastructure, and that means heating and electricity.

We're just headed into the winter.

It's going to be a brutal and terrible winter.

winter on the ground in Ukraine.

And, you know, one of Putin's strategies here is to maximally increase the suffering on the population of Ukraine in order to force things on his term, in part, Tim, because actually the strategy of going on a fence in a more conventional way has not been very successful for Putin.

It has come at enormous cost in manpower, in the strength of his military, which has been decimated on the ground in Ukraine.

Basically, they fought on the offensive all summer long to gain minimal, minimal support.

In fact, I was really struck by a statistic cited by The Times in its story today about this Witkoff-Dmitriyev peace proposal that suggested a Ukrainian think tank has come up with a number of four years, which is how long they say it would take for Russia to...

to fight at the current rate and gain territory at the current rate to get just this additional portion of the Donbass that Steve Witkoff wants Ukraine to give away to Russia, even though Russia doesn't control it right now.

Four years just to get a part of one country.

Right.

You know, Western Ukraine and civilian populations in the country and also Ukraine itself has been striking increasingly at targets inside of Russia using its domestically manufactured drones and other long range weapons.