Replay of TrendMacro Zoom conference call with Peter Van Praagh, eyewitness to the invasion of Ukraine

Van Praagh went to Kyiv 36 hours before the invasion to meet with senior security officials. Intelligence was telling them exactly when and where the invasion would come, and they were fully prepared. Kyiv was calm the night before, then the bombs came. Van Praagh's driver took him on a circuitous route to the Polish border, seven miles from which he had to go on foot. At the border officials required him to be in a vehicle, and he found a place in a car with a family being evacuated -- whose husband got out of the car at the border and headed back into Ukraine to fight. Russia underestimated the preparedness and courage of the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian people. The Russian military is poorly trained and equipped, as well as conflicted -- internal betrayal blocked an early attempt to assassinate Zelinsky. Small Russian tactical nukes are already in Ukraine. Now it's a death-race between the eventual military defeat of Ukraine and the economic defeat of Russia -- the sanctions have been very effective already. But Russia can't avoid irrecoverable economic ruin unless it makes an acceptable compromise with Ukraine before it is destroyed. Ukrainian neutrality is already a given -- the question is how many southern provinces could be ceded to Russia.