In the season finale of Escalation , Anastasiia Lapatina and Yulia Tymoshenko recount Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022. The western world is shocked, and US President Joe Biden and the US Congress attempt to send weapons to Ukraine to fight back. But fundamentally different perspectives on the fight will emerge and lead to tensions that leave Ukraine's fate uncertain, and its relationship with The United States in jeopardy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more...
Apr 14, 2025•57 min•Season 6Ep. 7
In this bonus episode of Escalation, hear our conversation with Professor John Mearsheimer. Mearsheimer is a historian and foreign policy expert at The University of Chicago, and he has some controversial opinions on the relationship between The United States, Ukraine, Russia and NATO. Our conversation with him was at times tense, but always interesting. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Apr 14, 2025•1 hr 1 min
In this bonus episode of 'Escalation,' we give you a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the show, featuring a conversation with our reporting and production team of Anastasiia Lapatina, Tyler McBrien, Benjamin Wittes and Max Johnston Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Apr 07, 2025•55 min
In this bonus episode of Escalation, you'll hear more music from the Ukrainian Cultural Forces. The Cultural Forces are a group of Ukrainian artists and veterans who travel the world as emissaries from the Ukrainian army. In September 2024, they were in Washington, DC, where our production team captured some of their performances. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Apr 06, 2025•14 min
In 2019, the relationship between The United States and Ukraine faces one of its biggest tests during a phone call between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The resulting scandal makes Ukraine a toxic issue for some lawmakers in the US Congress, where Ukrainian veterans are still trying to generate support for the war to this day. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mar 31, 2025•57 min•Season 6Ep. 6
In this bonus episode of Escalation, you'll hear our conversation with Evelyn Farkas, who is the Executive Director for The McCain Institute, and served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia in the Obama Administration. Farkas describes the US government's reaction to the invasion of Crimea, and discussions over aid to Ukraine. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mar 30, 2025•25 min
When Ukraine’s Russia-backed president refuses to sign a deal with the European Union, millions of Ukrainians take to the streets to force him out. Then the West watches as Russia invades Crimea and parts of Eastern Ukraine. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mar 24, 2025•51 min•Season 6Ep. 5
In this bonus episode of Escalation, we're bringing you an extended cut of our conversation with Mary Sarotte, a NATO Historian and International Relations Expert at John Hopkins University. Mary tells us about NATO's history and origins, it's strange relationship with Russia, and Ukraine's murky status in the alliance. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mar 22, 2025•26 min
A dirty presidential campaign in Ukraine culminates in an attempted assassination and ‘The Orange Revolution,’ where Ukrainians stop The Kremlin’s attempts to rig the election. Years later at a NATO summit in 2008, The United States and European allies concoct a high-risk plan to protect Ukraine going forward. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mar 17, 2025•40 min•Season 6Ep. 4
In this bonus episode of Escalation, we're bringing you a conversation with Daria Kaleniuk, a Ukrainian anti-corruption expert and activist. Daria tells us about Ukraine's history with corruption, the roots in the Soviet system, and the country's efforts to fight it. Stay tuned each week for the next chapter of Escalation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mar 15, 2025•25 min
By the late 90’s, Russia is reverting back to its corrupt, authoritarian ways and Ukraine begins to slide backward with it. In Ukraine, that corruption will lead to a gruesome murder and cover-up. While in Russia, that corruption will destroy any hopes for an emerging democracy. But after 9/11, The United States is solely focused on the fight against terrorism. About Escalation: In this narrative series from Lawfare and Goat Rodeo, Escalation lays bare the stakes of the Ukraine-Russia War throug...
Mar 10, 2025•39 min•Season 6Ep. 3
In this bonus episode of Escalation, we're bringing you an extended conversation with Mariana Budjeryn, a Historian and Senior Research Associate at Harvard and an expert on Ukraine's denuclearization. Stay tuned each week for the next chapter of Escalation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mar 08, 2025•27 min
Newly-independent Ukraine has inherited thousands of nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union. So The United States, Russia and Ukraine craft a high-stakes deal to disarm Ukraine in exchange for national security protection. But has Washington held up their end of the bargain? Or has Ukraine been betrayed? About Escalation: In this narrative series from Lawfare and Goat Rodeo, Escalation lays bare the stakes of the Ukraine-Russia War through powerful storytelling and compelling voices. It re...
Mar 03, 2025•41 min•Season 6Ep. 2
In this bonus episode of Escalation, we're bringing you an extended conversation with Russia expert and diplomat Fiona Hill. Stay tuned each week for the next chapter of Escalation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mar 01, 2025•22 min
The world watches The Cold War end and The Soviet Union break apart. And after centuries of Russian rule, Ukrainians may soon have their independence back. But in Washington, there’s fear that that independence could actually make the world more dangerous. About Escalation: In this new narrative series from Lawfare and Goat Rodeo, Escalation lays bare the stakes of the Ukraine-Russia War through powerful storytelling and compelling voices. It reveals forgotten promises and fragile alliances that...
Feb 24, 2025•38 min•Season 6Ep. 1
When Russia invades Ukraine in February 2022, the Western world is shocked. But to Ukrainians, the invasion has been centuries in the making. So how did we end up here? And have American efforts to avoid escalation in Ukraine & Russia created something deadly in its wake? COMING FEB 24TH In this new narrative series from Lawfare and Goat Rodeo, Escalation lays bare the stakes of the Ukraine-Russia War through powerful storytelling and compelling voices. It reveals forgotten promises and frag...
Feb 10, 2025•2 min
The fate of Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 prisoners are intertwined. The prisoners' biggest hope for freedom is if Donald Trump wins the 2024 election, takes office and makes the federal cases go away. But the people who stormed the Capitol committed straightforward crimes that were easier to investigate, easier to indict, easier to prove. Three years after Jan. 6, the story of how they have been held criminally accountable is mostly over. But for Trump and other Jan. 6 plotters , that story is ju...
May 02, 2024•1 hr 19 min•Season 5Ep. 5
It’s December 2020. Donald Trump continues to deny that he has lost the election. He and his inner circle are working feverishly to try to overturn it while Trump is getting more and more irate. Then, on Dec. 21, he meets a man named Jeffrey Clark. Suddenly, the full might of the Justice Department is within reach. And he plans to use it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mar 01, 2024•45 min•Season 5Ep. 4
Social media was key to Jan. 6. End to end. It was key to gathering the crowd that stormed the Capitol. It was key to generating the sentiment that led people to drop their lives to come to Washington willing to commit crimes. It was key to sending them home when the deed was done. Of course, we’re all on social media. But how does social media propel people to action, even inspire them to move from online to on the ground—and to the grounds of the Capitol? It’s impossible to track. But we know ...
Feb 07, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Season 5Ep. 3
In December 2020, The President and his advisors are still fighting to overturn the results of November’s presidential election. Then, in the middle of the month, a lawyer in Wisconsin sends a memo to the president’s legal team. This memo marks the beginning of a scheme that works its way through state legislatures and the halls of Congress, then to Trump himself. It is a scheme that ends with the Vice President of the United States in mortal danger. The main architect and proponent of this sche...
Jan 23, 2024•59 min•Season 5Ep. 2
It’s been three years since the insurrection of January 6th. There have been congressional investigations, prosecutions, and legal reforms, and it’s looking like 2024 will be the year that Donald Trump and his inner circle finally confront the criminal justice system. But is that enough to respond to an existential threat to our democracy? It all started with a lie: that Trump had won the 2020 election. So we begin there, with a look at the man who—other than Trump—mattered more to the Big Lie t...
Jan 06, 2024•47 min•Season 5Ep. 1
The season finale delves into what was going on behind the scenes in the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation in the months between its first public hearing to its second, almost a year later. To many, the Jan. 6 committee’s public silence seemed to indicate that it simply wasn’t doing anything. The records trickling out of the court system, however, told a much different story. Episode 6 details the committee’s legal battles over subpoena compliance, executive privilege, contempt, investigating fel...
Jun 16, 2023•1 hr 34 min•Season 3Ep. 6
In this fifth episode of The Aftermath, we explore another aspect of Congress’s response to Jan. 6: efforts to create an investigative body to find out what had happened. Proposals for a national commission began the day after the attack and continued to gain traction with support from both Democrats and Republicans. After a months-long negotiation, the House passed a bill establishing a bipartisan national commission on the model of the 9/11 Commission, which had conducted a widely-respected in...
Jan 05, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Season 3Ep. 5
This episode of The Aftermath recalls the brief period where Democrats and Republicans worked together to respond to Jan. 6—and actually made a lot of progress. How? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jan 05, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 3Ep. 4
In the days after the January 6th insurrection, for Raskin and his colleagues, it wasn’t entirely clear that the insurrection was over. And for at least a brief moment, there seemed to be some kind of consensus. The moment turned out to be brief indeed, at least with respect to accountability for Trump himself. Within a week, the consensus had devolved into a sharp partisan divide. The House had passed an article of impeachment charging Trump with incitement to insurrection—but only a small hand...
Jan 05, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Season 3Ep. 3
In the wake of January 6, there were immediate calls for en masse arrests of all individuals on the Capitol compound, and demands that every one of them be hauled into court to stand trial. But our justice system does not work that way. The bedrock of our legal system is the due process of law. You can’t be tried for being part of an insurrectionist mob, only for the specific things that you did–or, more precisely, what prosecutors can prove you did. January 6, is not one case, but thousands of ...
Jan 05, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Season 3Ep. 2
The Aftermath is not a podcast about the insurrection itself, or about how we got there. It’s a podcast about what happened next – how our democracy is attempting to right itself in the face of an existential threat. Who is being criminally prosecuted, and who isn’t. How is Congress taking action—and what is it ignoring. And how are our institutions telling the story—and who gets to tell it. To set the scene for this project we are going to spend one episode—this one—on the events of the day its...
Jan 05, 2023•52 min•Season 3Ep. 1
Mahnaz was a member of a Female Tactical Platoon in the Afghan Military. She was one of tens of thousands of Afghans who came to the United States during the withdrawal from Afghanistan. In our final episode, you’ll learn about the bureaucratic mess they’re still going through to get resettled. And how Congress could pass legislation to help, but it might not even come up for a vote. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Aug 15, 2022•34 min•Season 4Ep. 7
20 years of war and broken bureaucracy culminate during the US withdrawal at the Kabul airport. Thousands of Afghans rush to the tarmac where American forces sort through the crowds. Veterans, advocates and politicians try to get their allies out while the Taliban rapidly takes control of Afghanistan. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Aug 15, 2022•58 min•Season 4Ep. 6
We return to Fred—an Afghan combat interpreter who served with American soldiers for more than 13 years. After years of denials, an ad hoc team of lawyers and veterans tried to push his Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) application through federal bureaucracy. Then, we describe how a new president aimed to bring the SIV program to a screeching halt. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Aug 15, 2022•40 min•Season 4Ep. 5
