Eliot returns from his travels and provides a trip report on his visit to Ukraine. He and Eric discuss the state of the fight, the challenges that the Ukrainians face with a hiatus in U.S. assistance, the progress that Russia has made in battlefield adaptation, Ukrainian defense innovation, the U.S. efforts to limit Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries and military bases inside Russia proper, and the recent article in Foreign Affairs that outlines the April-May 2022 negotiations between Russia and Ukraine that failed to yield an end to the war. They discuss Iran's massive, complex uav and missile assault on Israel, the deterioration of deterrence and Israeli options for resetting deterrence in response. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/talks-could-have-ended-war-ukraine https://x.com/dszeligowski/status/1780183950507262201 https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/04/kyiv-spring-ukraine-military-aid/678013/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/iran-israel-coalition-malevolent/678069/?utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share https://www.the-american-interest.com/2014/12/10/the-kind-of-thing-crisis/ https://archive.org/details/the-weekly-standard-2014-03-17/page/n11/mode/2up Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.