Background Briefing: February 19, 2025

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After Throwing Ukraine Under the Bus, Trump is Now Trashing Zelensky

We begin with Trump not just throwing Ukraine under the bus but now its leader who he is trashing because Zelensky correctly observed that Trump is getting his talking points from the Russian information space. Joining us from Berlin is Simon Shuster, a reporter for Time Magazine based in New York City, by way of Moscow, Kyiv and Berlin. He has previously covered Russia and the former Soviet Union for Reuters, The Associated Press, The Moscow Times and Foreign Policy, and he is the author of The Showman: Inside the Invasion that Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky. His latest articles at Time include “Inside Elon Musk’s War on Washington” and “Why Biden’s Ukraine Win Was Zelensky’s Loss.”

 

What Can Ukraine Do to Defend Itself and Rebuild After Trump Sells the Country out to Putin?

Then we get an assessment of what Ukraine can do to defend itself and rebuild after the horrendous damage Russia has inflicted on the country following some kind of settlement Trump and Putin will have imposed on it from the so-called peace talks in Saudi Arabia. Joining us is Emma Ashford, a senior fellow in the Reimaging Grand Strategy Program at The Stimson Center, a Visiting Professor at Georgetown University and a nonresident fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point. With expertise in the politics of Russia and Europe, her work focuses on questions of grand strategy, international security, and the future of US foreign policy. She is author of Oil, the State, and War: The Foreign Policies of Petrostates and her forthcoming book is First Among Equals: US Foreign Policy for a Multipolar World and we discuss her article at Foreign Affairs, “Ukraine Must Guarantee Its Own Security: A European Troop Commitment Is Not the Way to End This War—or Prevent the Next One.”

How Trump Rode Into the White House Again on a Wave of Reactionary Nihilism

Then finally we look into the wave of reactionary nihilism Trump rode back into the White House on and speak with Katherine Stewart, a journalist whose recent work has appeared at The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Guardian. She is the author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism upon which the feature documentary God and Country by Rob Reiner is based. Her latest book, out yesterday, is Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy.