The New Yorker:

Any deal will likely be favorable to the Russians, though the clock on Putin’s ability to sustain a wartime economy may be running out.

By Isaac Chotiner

Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to end the war in Ukraine, which, depending on your perspective, began when Russia invaded Ukraine, in early 2022, or when it annexed Crimea and fomented separatism in eastern Ukraine eight years earlier. Many Ukrainians fear that Trump—who is both skeptical of sending more military aid to Ukraine and an admirer of Vladimir Putin—will force the Ukrainian government to agree to cede chunks of its territory to Russia. At the same time, the Ukrainians are clearly exhausted from the war, and the Biden Administration’s support has not been enough to turn the tide in Ukraine’s favor.

To talk about the war, I recently spoke by phone with Rod Thornton, an associate professor in the defense-studies department at King’s College London, and an expert on the Russian military, who has lived in both Moscow and Kyiv. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we also discussed what the arrival of North Korean troops allied with Russia says about the state of the war, what Trump plans to promise Ukraine and Russia, and how the war might have been expected to play out if Kamala Harris had won the election.

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