The Fight

There are few who understand this war better than Nataliya Bugayova. She lived and worked in Ukraine for years. Her present focus – as a non-resident fellow and the former Russia team lead at The Institute for the Study of War, is on the analysis of the Kremlin’s operations and on what’s happening in Ukraine today. She also serves as Director of Strategic Intelligence at a company called Vertical Knowledge.

Bugayova was part of a visiting delegation with The Cipher Brief that was led by General David Petraeus last fall. We sat down shortly afterward, to get her perspective on how this war is ‘really’ going and how she sees it ending.

Colonel Eugene Vindman is well-known in D.C. circles. Not just because he and his twin brother Alexander grabbed headlines during the Trump Administration by raising alarms about the former president’s pressuring of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to open a corruption investigation against then-presidential candidate Joe Biden, but also because he has recently announced plans to run for a U.S. Congressional seat in Virginia.

He immigrated to the U.S. as a child from Soviet Ukraine and then served a career in the U.S. military in places like Iraq before landing at the White House. He was dismissed from his job at the National Security Council after testifying in the impeachment case that was brought against President Trump – when you might remember the former president was impeached by the House but acquitted by the Senate.

We ran into him in Kyiv during a Cipher Brief trip to Ukraine in September, where he was working on documenting the extensive war crimes that have been committed there since Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in February of 2024. The scenes have been horrific – from civilians gunned down in the streets for nothing to the kidnapping and forced relocation of Ukrainian children. If this were to happen in the U.S. there would be outrage. But it didn’t happen here.

As Ukraine struggles to keep the world focused on helping it win this war, I sat down with Vindman earlier this year in Kiev, to talk about his unique perspective on the documenting and prosecution of war crimes and about why he feels like justice – however long it takes – must be served in Ukraine.

Former Senior CIA Officer Paul Kolbe has spent the bulk of his professional life focused on Russia. He spent 25 years at the CIA, where a large part of his work was centered on the former Soviet Union and the Cold War. After leaving government, Kolbe led BP’s global intelligence division and later served as Director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Intelligence Project. Kolbe is also a Cipher Brief Expert and was part of a delegation that traveled multiple times to Ukraine this year. ‘The Fight’ co-host Suzanne Kelly sat down with Kolbe in Kyiv to talk about his unique perspective on the war and about whether what we’re reading in the media matches what’s really happening there.

In this episode of The Fight, Suzanne talks with former CIA officer, and Cipher Brief Expert Glenn Corn. Glenn is a former Senior Executive in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and has more than 34 years in the U.S. Intelligence, Defense, and Foreign Affairs communities. He spent over 17 years serving overseas. Glenn has an incredibly unique perspective on the mindset of the Russians. We sat down with Glenn on our most recent trip to Ukraine for his very first podcast. Suzanne and Glenn covered a lot in this conversation including why the war in Ukraine is so important and what it could mean for the US and the world if Putin is not stopped in his attempt to destroy Ukraine as a country. Glenn also has a special message for Americans.