No, It's Not Time for Ukraine to Hold Talks With Putin

The Institute for the Study of War is a fairly blunt name for a blunt subject. It’s also very timely, thanks to Vladimir Putin. While the invasion of Ukraine has been a complete disaster for the Russian leader, it’s put experts on warfare very much in demand, and few more so than Kimberly Kagan, founder of the aforementioned institute.

“I founded ISW in 2007 with zero dollars and zero employees, but with a mission to educate civilians on military affairs and to give them the tools that they need to make informed policy decisions about war and peace,” she explained to me this week. “The US was engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan and there was a gap between how the military and how civilians understood what transpires on the battlefield. I wanted to bridge that gap.” As part of the mission, ISW puts out a fantastic daily newsletter on the latest from the battlefield — you can sign up here — and shares its hyper-detailed mapping data with news organizations, including Bloomberg (see below).