Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experience Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Stephanie Baker. She joins us to
discuss her new fascinating book, Punishing Putin Inside the Global
Economic War to bring down Russia. Stephanie is a senior
writer Bloomberg BusinessWeek Investigations and we're so happy to have
her on this edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: Welcome, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Absolutely a fascinating look at extraordinary events going on. I
want to get into how you kind of set the
tone for all of this, and it really does look
at the disparity that is going on for every day
Russians and what the oligarchs are experiencing. Obviously two different
sets of experiences, and it all opens with the day
in February when Russia decided it was going to invade
Ukraine and the massive amounts of wealth exhibited in a
particular super yacht that was in the Caribbean. And when
all of this happened, when aggressions began in February of
twenty twenty two, there was this unprecedented effort, I think
that's the correct word, unprecedented. But the United States European
governments banded together and said this cannot be. We're not
going to allow this to happen. We're going to check
the resources and wealth of Vladimir Putin in Russia and
his oligarchs, and we're going to start by seizing the
super yachts, massive amounts of materialistic prizes out in places
like the Caribbean. And it's an interesting way to open
into what really is going on in how we're fighting
this war, this shadow war in Russia.
Speaker 2: Right, So I did decide to open it with the
saga of this super yacht A because it's very colorful
and it was one of the highest profile acts that
the US Justice Departments newly formed Klepto Capture Task Force
took in the in the weeks and months following the
full scale invasion. Now, the rest of the book goes
into far more consequential economic sanctions against Russia, hitting their
oil revenues and their import of Western technology. But you
know the symbolic nature of going after some of the
assets of sanctioned Russian billionaires as a way of signaling
this is a new era. These sanctions are now going
to be enforced and we're no longer going to be
turning a blind diet. I thought that was a fascinating chase. Now.
I think there was a belief amongst some in the
find An administration that this is one way of exposing
to the Russians that they were getting ripped off, uh
by exposing the amount of wealth corruption that was happening
at the very top. Now, I think that was very
hard for that message to get through because Brutin has
this iron clad grip on the media and the information
narrative in Russia. But it's something that the late Russian
opposition activists Alexey Navoni has done with a lot of
his investigations exposing the sort of corruption and the mansions,
et cetera. But I also saw it as potentially a
route for forfeiting some of these Russian so called oligarch
assets for use in Ukraine. Now that has proven to
be more difficult than some people expected at the beginning,
because these are all going through the US courts. They're
going through a US legal process where everyone has their
day in court and is allowed to challenge. And in
this case, a Russian billionaire has come forward to say, no,
that yacht, Actually that's my yachts, that doesn't belong to
that sanction Russian billionaire, and I'm going to fight this
tooth and nail. And they've been at it for two
and a half years now, and it's just a really
fascinating case because it gets at, you know, the opulence
and the elaborate and showy wealth that Russians have become
so famous for. But it also shows the degree of
difficulty that the US is having and going after some
of these sanction of Asian cases because of the way
the Russians have structured their assets the holding of their assets.
And so unfortunately, I think that the hope for you know,
hundreds of millions of Russian oligarch forfeited assets for Ukraine
has not materialized. They've only managed to forfeit a very
small amount of money. And this super yacht case is
a test case because it actually it's costing the US
government money. They seized it, as I detail in my book,
they seized it in Fiji, they sailed it to San Diego,
but while it's under US seizure warrant, the US government
has to pay for it. So they want to They
want to get this one off their books as quickly
as possible.
Speaker 1: I would imagine. Yeah, it is a fascinating way to
open this for me because I think it is as
kind of as you explained, it is the Biden Harris
administration way of, you know, going about things. It certainly
fits into their agenda on how they view the world
and how they view international politics, how they view foreign relations,
and how they view allies and enemies in an ever
changing world. And I think to a great degree that
has been problematic for this administration and this effort to
combat Vladimir Putin. Would you agree disagree?
Speaker 2: My overall take is that the economic sanctions and the
economic war that was pursued after the full scale invasion
was both unprecedented in scope. I mean, the number of designations,
the number of people and companies targeted was enormous. Russia
is the largest economy ever targeted by such a broad
sanctions coalition, but that the rollout of some of these
measures was too slow. Now I've said this before that
I viewed this as a kind of a grand experiment.
Because Russia was such a large economy, because it was
such a large oil exporter, it presented unique challenges. But
that when confronted with a nuclear power invading its neighbor,
no one wanted to go to war with Russia, So
that shifted the response into the economic sphere in ways
that had never been tested before. And that's why I
thought it was an important book to write to kind
of explore what the thinking was, you know, how it unraveled,
and I think they learned as they went on. But
I think that the greatest takeaway I have is that
we weren't prepared to incur the costs required to truly
isolate Russia economically and bleed putin of the resources to
wage this war. And that has been the fundamental limiting
factor I think on the effectiveness of sanctions.
Speaker 1: Well, we're nearly coming up on three years into this experiment.
As you put it, Council on Foreign Relations, I think
conservatively lists one hundred and seventy five billion dollars in
US aid. To date, those figures are changing, and I
believe in need of updating, State Department says more than
sixty four point one billion dollars has been allocated in
US military assistance. Do you believe these numbers are Where
do the cost actually stand to date?
Speaker 2: I think those are pretty accurate figures right. Europe has
also provided both financial and military aid in similar numbers,
if even slightly more. But the economic war was designed
to work in tandem with the military aid to Ukraine,
but in many ways they followed the same trajectory, which
is that both were rolled out too slowly to make
a difference. That some of the things that were provided
to Ukraine in terms of military assistance late in the
game would have made had a bigger impact if they
were provided early on F sixteen fighter jets for instance. Similarly,
with the Economic War, I think if they had rolled
out some of the measures earlier and enforced them properly,
that Russia would be in a worse position than it
is today. But look, sanctions are viewed as a low
cost tool. You know that they occupy the place between
diplomacy and an outright kinetic war, and in some ways
that's true. I think that the most costly form of
sanctions would be against Russia's oil revenues, and that's where
they've been I think the weakest in terms of enforcement.
I think oil remains the key to undermining Russia's ability
to sustain the war.
Speaker 1: You see similar arguments being made in places like Iran,
and yet we have, you know, an Israel that has
been restrained on that front, mainly by the currentministration, with
concerns about what that would ultimately cost. And certainly politics
play a role in this, and I guess that's the
big question. You talk about unprecedented experimentation in going after
what at one time the eleventh largest economy in the world,
and trying to do so with an economy that also
features nuclear weaponry. It's a thin ice position, but how
much is politics playing a role in all of this policy.
Speaker 2: I think politics did play a role obviously. I mean,
one of the things they needed to do is one
of the things I think the Biden administration was particularly
concerned about was high gasoline prices, for instance, and I
think that was really a prominent political factor in all
of this, that they didn't want to take any actions
that would cause prices to go up. In the United States,
we were coming out of the pandemic, we were suffering
inflation due to supply chain constraints, and I think that
was why you saw the Biden administration proposed this wonky
out of the box proposal to cap Russia's oil prices,
where they would deny Western services to oil sold above
sixty dollars a barrel. Now, this was primarily in response
to a proposed EU embargo that had the Biden administration
panicking that it would cause Russia to withhold oil from
global markets, which would in turn cause prices despite right
before the crucial midterm elections in twenty twenty two. So
that was a policy that I think was very politicized
in terms of its design. It did work for a
few months, It did drive down Russia's revenues, but because
it wasn't properly enforced, Russia was able to assemble this
shadow fleet of oil tankers operating outside of Western markets,
and it found new buyers. It shipped its oil to India,
who which went from importing almost no Russian oil before
the full scale invasion to importing almost forty percent of
its oil from Russia. So that was something that took
I think policymakers by surprise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't doubt that at all, And so you
know that was to be a driving factor it did
not materialize, so kind of as a candidatt before, how
much are the Russian people paying for all of this?
The oligarchs aren't paying for it, how much is Russia
paying for it? We know that the casualty list are
immense in both Russia and Ukraine. What's the ultimate cost there?
And does that mean anything to Vladimir Putin?
Speaker 2: Right? So you mentioned the casualty figures which are just staggering.
By the latest estimates UK Intel, UK US Intelligence, it's
roughly six hundred and fifty thousand killed and wounded, and
I mean that is of a level that makes the
Soviet War in Afghanistan pale in comparison. So the cost
I think there has been enormous, But because of the
grip on political discourse that Putin has, there's been very
little discussion or upheaval as a result of that. Surprisingly,
and I think it's partly because he's been paying out
death benefits to soldiers who died on the battlefield in Ukraine.
That are enormous keeping people happy through high payments. At
this point, the Russians have suffered from the economic war.
The Russians have suffered from high inflation, and that is
I think the real sign of the sanctions finally beginning
to bite in Russia. The inflation in Russia is about
nine percent. The central Bank had to hike interest rates
to a record twenty one percent just last week. And
that's partly because of sanctions, which are causing imports to
be more expensive. It's partly because of Putin's record spending
on defense and security that is just pumping money into
the economy, and it's partly because there's a labor shortage.
There was a brain drain immediately after the full scale invasion.
A lot of people just left the country because they
didn't want any part of it. So almost a million
people roughly, we don't know the exact number left, So
a brain drain of epic proportions, coupled with the losses
on the battlefield and Putin's efforts to staff up these
defense factories, that Russia is facing this acute labor shortage,
and that is one of the reasons why you see
him turning to North Korea where we've got these reports
of North Korean troops joining the battle in Kirsk, this
region in Russia that borders Ukraine, where Ukrainians have launched
this incursion and occupy about three hundred square miles.
Speaker 1: That's problematic to say the least, at least the optics are.
I think about Korea in nineteen fifty and nineteen fifty
one when you had this so called peace operation going on,
and then ultimately you got communists China involved. And believe me,
I understand North Korea is not communist China, but it
does set up the tone, along with Putin's threats about
potential nuclear engagement, all of those sorts of things, that
this is really being operated on a very very fine line.
That seems like this policy, this experiment that you mentioned
could snap at any time.
Speaker 2: Well, Putin has basically escalated dramatically by involving North Korea
and deciding to completely ignore sanctions on North Korea, which
Russia was following diligently until March of this year when
it refused to renew the panel of experts monitoring North
Korea's compliance. So this is Putin turning to his neighbor
to help him out, and you have this alliance of
sanctioned countries. But I think it's a sign of his
desperation and that he's been trying to position Russia as
stronger than it really is. And you know, if it's snaps,
I'm not sure what you mean by snaps. It could
snap in a way that Russia could be could be
facing a real crisis, financial crisis as a result of
both the spending on the war as well as the
after effects of sanctions in various ways. You already see
what's happening in Russia right now is a mini payments crisis.
That the threat of sanctions that was rolled out in
December by the Biden administration to impose sanctions on foreign
financial institutions that do business with sanctioned Russian entities, particularly
in the military industrial complex. That threat was widened in June,
and that caused Chinese banks to step back because they
don't want to get sanctioned by the US. The amount
of trade they're doing with Russia is relatively small, and
so you see payment delays from Chinese banks. You see
the cost of borrowing in Chinese wand shoot up. And
that is why this last week Putin host this bricks
forum with all these world leaders coming in, and his
top of his agenda was coming up with a payment
platform to get around restrictions on using Swift, this Gmail
system for banks, financial messaging system for banks to transmit payments.
He's got a real problem on his hands, and I
think the response there was that not that many people
were terribly interested. I think that will take a lot
of time and effort to get off the ground. So
I'm not predicting that Russia's on the verge of collapse economically,
but it is very vulnerable to a drop in oil prices.
And what you've seen lately is oil prices are now
starting to come down because tensions in the Middle East
have dropped. There's a belief that Iran may not retaliate
against Israel for the air strikes that they launched last week.
As a result, oil prices are coming down, and if
they come down further, that could really destabilize the Russian economy.
The Russian budget depends on oil revenues for roughly at
this point a third of its income, so that is
where the pain could really be inflicted on Russia. That
could change Putin's calculus on Ukraine.
Speaker 3: As soon as Trump got elected, liberal cities tightened up.
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Speaker 1: Be informed.
Speaker 3: Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris
Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 1: Our guest today is Stephanie Baker discussing her new book
Punishing Putin inside the Global Economic War to bring down Russia.
It's an interesting point that you just mentioned, and I
want to delve into that just a bit more. Obviously,
Putin is closely watching, if not somehow trying to be engaged,
not to necessarily at the point that everybody thinks so
in US elections, But curious what you think about this
noting what you've written about, it would seem to me
that Trump's idea of energy exploration, drilling, expansion of US energy,
as was the case during his administration, if that poses
a significant threat based on the Achilles Heel that you note,
war of Vladimir Putin and Russia's economy that's oil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it's a good point. I mean, the sooner
the world weans itself off of Russian oil supplies, the
easier it will be to undermine his ability to keep
this war going. And you've seen already that the expansion
in US production has weakened the power of OPEC plus,
this cartel that Russia joined about a decade ago, because
they don't control as much of global output as they
once did. So anything that can loosen the control of
OPEK plus by additional production, I think would be a
good step. However, I think what we're looking at is
a long term softening and oil demand. We're seeing weakening,
a weakening economy in China, which has been buying a
lot of Russian oil, so that that's putting downward pressure
as well. You know a lot of factors going to
oil prices, So it's not just US policy on you know,
capping Russia's oil oil oil revenues. There's there's a lot
of different factors US production. As you say, China's production
of you know, electronic electric vehicles is going to you know,
soften demand for oil as well. So I think long term,
in particular, Russia is facing a fairly bleak future economically.
Speaker 1: I remember distinctly covering many many of the contenders and
pretenders for the GOP presidential nomination in Iowa about this
time last year, before the the famous Iowa Caucuses, And
as this parade kept coming through places like des Moine
and Cedar Rapids and Davenport, I would hear from candidates
like Senator Tim Scott or former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley,
and they seem to be saying similar things. You know,
at the very least, what we're doing in Ukraine and
what we have to keep doing against Russia is deplete
Russia's ability to make broader war. You know, Tim Scott,
I remember telling me that, you know, the idea here
is to invest to equip Ukraine so that we continue
to go after, you know, the war making machine of Russia.
Has the United States been successful in doing that? Over
the last two and a half nearly three years now.
Speaker 2: So let's be clear that they obviously the sanctions have
not been enough to turn Putin back or really fundamentally
changes calculus. And that's partly because he doesn't really care
about the health of the Russian economy. I mean, he's
really head of a mafia state. People around him have
been enriched. I like to say that the sanctions could
be more effective, but let's be clear here they have
cost Russia hundreds of billions of dollars. The G seven,
the group of seven most industrialized nations, froze Russia's roughly
three hundred billion dollars worth of central bank reserves. That
was a huge move. You know, there have been hundreds
of millions of other dollars belonging to you know, Russian
private assets that have been frozen. Think I think Ukraine
would be in a very different place had no action
been taken. And it's hard to prove a counterfaccial, of course,
but I think it's it's important to understand that it
has imposed costs. It has made it more difficult, I
think for Russia to import some of the semiconductors that
it needs for producing its precision guided weapons. But it's
been leaky, and that's partly because the sanctions coalition has
not been broad enough. And you see, and I go
into this in the book, that you know Russia and
the intelligence agencies have tapped a broad array of these middlemen,
these these sort of cutouts who are posing as regular businesses,
either in the US, which is a case I go
into in the book, a couple of US based middlemen
operating directly with a Russian intelligence officer to ship restricted
technology for use in Russia's defense industry. They've also used
these companies and these show companies in places like Hong
Kong and China to get their hands on goods. Now,
the threat of secondary sanctions on Chinese banks has been
I think effective at perhaps slowing that down and making
it more costly. I think they're paying in some cases
as much as twice as much. But it hasn't been
enough to really grind Putin's war machine to a halt.
And I think that's part of the problem with this
economic war, that it takes time to build up pressure,
and unfortunately Ukraine doesn't have a lot of time, and
we don't know when that sort of turning point will
be so I think there are other measures that could
be taken to really bleed putin of the money he
needs to keep this going, in particular really going after
Russian oil revenues, blacklisting more of his shadow fleet, reducing
the price cap from sixty dollars a barrel to at
least fifty, if not lower, and sanctioning more people that
are buying oil from these, you know, from Russia in
violation of the price gap.
Speaker 1: That is a central question to all of this, and
that question is a matter of time and timing. How
much time does Ukraine have? And I think it's important
to note that as well, with the amount of US
resources involved in this and the fatigue clearly the polling
shows that Americans have in funding this particular expansive war effort.
How much time does Ukraine have to resist Russia? How
much time does it have to resist the American people
and the will to aid Ukraine?
Speaker 2: Right, So, one of the things I also go into
in my book, and I try to tell it in
a very accessible style through people who are exploring this idea,
which was why don't we go the next step from
just seizing this three hundred billion dollar pot of money
that belonged to Russia Central Bank, go from freezing it
actually confiscating it and using it for Ukraine. Why should
Western taxpayers be paying for Ukraine when most lawyers agree
that Russia has a legal obligation to pay war reparations
to Ukraine. It invaded the country and brought enormous destruction
in violation of the UN Charter. Why not just take
that money. We know that that money is never going
back to Russia unless Russia agrees to pay war reparations.
So why wait until there's some political change in Moscow
that and that might never come. Why not use that
pot of money because it could actually make a difference
to whether or not Ukraine can win the war and
withstand the Russian pressure. Now if it's made available now.
I go into this in the book that Putin made
this strategic calculation that there could be a threat of
US sanctions. He reduced Russia's holdings of US dollars, increased
his holdings of U. So when they came to freezing
that pot of money, most of it was actually in Europe,
and Europe indeed was too divided, has been too divided
to act and go the next step to actually confiscate
the money. So what they did was they came up
with this fix, this kind of financial engineering solution to
use the interest payments on that money to leverage a loan,
a fifty billion dollars bone for Ukraine. Now that took
six months they finally agreed it. That should make a difference.
But ultimately I think as this drags on, I think
they'll be increasing pressure to use that principle, that pot
of money for Ukraine, because you know, you're right, I
think there is a degree of tiring in the West
of You know, why should taxpayers continue to pay when
there's this lot of money that we know Russia is
going to have to pay them anyway. And let's be clear,
Russia's been waging a war to destroy the Ukrainian nation,
the Ukrainian economy, destroying its power generation capacity, it's ability
basically to keep the lights on. So making that money
available to Ukraine could make a difference. And unfortunately, I
do worry that if they come to that decision, it
might come too late. For the moment, I think the
loan will tie them over and maybe there'll be a
change of heart as things as the political situation in
the US changes who knows.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, I mean, you take a look at what
has been happening over the last two and a half
years in this country, and there are a lot of
Americans who view Ukraine as certainly an imperfect ally certainly
not one where I think the majority of Americans want
to risk a full scale hot war with Russia for
involving NATO and uk and those sorts of things. And
you also have some of the things happening in Ukraine
that we're talking about fighting for freedom in Western Europe
in the world, and yet you have a country in
Ukraine that has exhibited no small share of corruption and
the polluting of the kind of values that America says
it wants to import. How do you deal with those
kinds of perception issues and real problems going on in
this war for Ukraine.
Speaker 2: Well, you're absolutely right that there was rampant corruption in
Ukraine prior to the full scale invasion, and I think
the war really kind of unified the country in a
dramatic way. And I think getting Ukraine on the path
to possible EU membership has forced them to clean up
their act. Now. I'm not saying that there is no
corruption still in Ukraine. I think there has been there's
been in particular around military recruitment. That's been one of
the worst areas of corruption we've seen since the war,
of basically paying bribes to not have to serve on
the front line, and that has been a big problem.
But I think I've been traveling to Ukraine since nineteen
ninety eight when I was a young I started out
as a young reporter in Russia and Eastern Europe, and
I made my first trip to Ukraine in nineteen ninety
eight and went there a ton during between twenty seventeen
and twenty nineteen, and went back in June of this year,
and I just thought it was such a different place.
It had a different feel to it completely. It felt
much more European facing, much more pro Western and in fact,
when I was there, it kind of reminded me of
how I was greeted as an American in Prague right
after the end of the Cold War, that everyone loved
meeting an American. And I think there's huge amount of
gratitude in Ukraine, you know, for the US support that's
been provided, and you know, I think it's I think
it's changed Ukraine in many respects for the better. Let's
be clear that the alternative, a Russian takeover will just
mean that Russian corruption will subsume Ukraine. And you know
that's not in anyone's interest.
Speaker 1: So what is the path forward as as you see it?
I mean, we we've touched upon this, some of the
things that as you as you've researched this, what has
hurt Russia, what has done nothing to Russia's war efforts?
I think about Nixon in Vietnam, and I think about
this turn of phrase, peace with honor for Ukraine? Is
Ukraine even considering that Vladimir Zulenski and his regime, Are
they even considering the notion right now of some kind
of a settlement, because certainly it would seem the will
of the GOP presidential candidate is to reach some immediate
settlement which could drastically alter how things are being conducted
US policy in Ukraine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, And look, I think the sort of
the current policy of giving Ukraine just enough not to
lose but not enough to win has not been very successful.
Zelensky obviously has outlined what he calls his victory plan,
which is essentially a combination of a massive step up
in the sanctions campaign against Russia, along with the ability
to use Western missiles long range Western missiles against Russian
military targets to put Russia in a weekend position should
there be any talks, And so far he hasn't gotten that.
I mean, there's more to his plan. He hasn't. We
don't all have the details of what he's outlined.
Speaker 1: I worry.
Speaker 2: I mean, if Trump takes over and we have to
go off of what he's said he'll do, which is
and the war in a day by getting Putin on
the phone, getting Lensky on the phone, and just working
at a deal that risks ceding territory to Russia, which
I think will be used by Putin as a necessary
breathing room that he wants to regroup and rearm. Because
I don't think Putin has changed his overall goals of
taking Kiev. I think that's what he still wants to do,
whether or not he puts that on the back burner
for a number of months or a year or two.
I think we have to recognize that his goals have
not changed, and the only way to put Ukrainian at
strong enough position to do a deal and try to
end this war is to really put the Russians on
the back foot. Now, I think it's possible that Trump
could do this, right, I'm not saying that there could
be another version of this where he tries to get
Putin to sign up to this deal, Putin doesn't want
to do it, and Trump, you know, really dramatically steps
up the economic war against Russia. That's perfectly possible because
I think the way he's talking about it, he's making
it sound like it would be pretty easy to get
Putin to stop. And I'm not so sure that's the case.
Speaker 1: It just seems endless under both circumstances. I mean, I'm
in two Americans who are already feeling the fatigue of this.
What you mentioned I think is very well taken. You know,
it could be a matter of ending the war. Ukraine
is going to have to give up something. Putin rests
for a while, and then within a certain period of
time it's Russia back in, going after Kiev, going after
the rest of Ukraine, or you know, it's sending in
billions upon billions of dollars more in this never ending battle. Again,
I do understand Ukraine has only so much time, but
you know, what is ultimately that time, what are the
overall costs for US taxpayers and for global security? And
I guess what I'm ultimately saying is both scenarios seem
pretty bleak.
Speaker 2: I agree that it is bleak, but let's look at
the situation from this perspective that for relatively small amount
of money, the Ukrainian Army has destroyed huge sways of
the Russian army and defense stockpiles. I mean, US military
spending is really geared towards Russia and China, and I
think in many ways it's been a cost effective move.
Speaker 4: It's both taught the US lessons about how modern warfare
is being fought. It is revealed the inside and inner
workings of Russian weaponry that we didn't know before. It
is exposed the weakness of our defense industrial complex in
the United States that needs to be really stepped up,
and has allowed our US stockpiles to be replenished with newstock.
So there have been positives. I wouldn't say this is
a complete one way street. It has created jobs in
the United States, and I would stress that I think
Beijing is looking very carefully at what is happening in Ukraine,
and I think if if Russia is perceived to win
and Ukraine is perceived to lose, I think it would
embold in China to go after Taiwan, and I think
they're assessing the costs of doing so looking at the
sanctions campaign against Russia. But I do think, much like
the way Putin looked at the Asters withdrawal from Afghanistan
as a sort of signal to go ahead, that the
US would be too weak.
Speaker 2: To respond, I think a US withdrawal of support ta
Kiev would be a real signal to China.
Speaker 1: I think it's a fascinating book. It's an interesting look
into where we have been, where we presently are, and
where it all suggests we are going. The book punishing
Putin inside the global economic war to bring down Russia.
I want to thank our guest today for joining us,
Stephanie Baker, on this edition of the Federalist Radio r
Thank you for your time.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. It was great.
Speaker 1: Absolutely you have been listening to another edition of the
Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, senior correspondent at the Federalist.
We'll be back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers
of freedom and anxious for the Fray.
Speaker 2: Untain, Man Pump count say, pointing to Adob Many Pulis
Speaker 1: And they check the Man Pump tab platinum in the