Ben Hodges is a retired United States Army officer, who became commander of United States Army Europe in November 2014, and held that position for three years until retiring from the United States Army in January 2018. Until recently he was the Pershing Chair in Strategic Studies, at the Centre for European Policy Analysis, specialising in NATO, Transatlantic relationship and international security. ———-Over the past week, Russia sent 1,220 glide bombs, 40 missiles and more than 850 drones into Ukraine, including a couple of high explosive drones that hit the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. The idea that Putin wants peace is a dangerous delusion. Yet at the Munich Security conference last week several things came into sharp focus. The Trump administration seems desperate to secure peace and is prepared to grant any concession to get Putin to simply agree to negotiations. The victim of the war, Ukraine, and its largest supporter in monetary terms, Europe, are being cut out of the negotiation process. Ukraine is denied the security of NATO membership. Sanctions against Russia may be eased, and war criminal Putin normalised on the world stage. Moreover, the US under Trump is prepared to extort and blackmail victims of war and terror such as Ukraine, to strip its mineral resources, deny its agency and negate its sovereign borders. Europe is being told it’s on its own, with the implication it comes under Russia’s Eurasian imperial sphere of influence. In this episode we ask, how much worse can the situation get, and what does Putin want us to feel at this point of inflection? ———-