Decoding Geopolitics Podcast with Dominik Presl

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This is a conversation of Simon Shuster, a journalist and an author of The Showman, a biography of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Over the past years, Simon has a unique opportunity - he spent years in close vicinity of Zelensky, including weeks when he was embedded with him inside the presidential compound. And so he got to know him better than almost anyone else except for maybe a few people in Zelensky’s family and inner circle - giving him unique insight into the mindset, ideas and personality of Ukraine’s leader.

In this conversation we get into who Zelensky really is behind the wartime image, what four and a half years of war have done to him, his dramatic relationship with Donald Trump, and most importantly how is he actually thinking about ending the war: whether he's holding out for total victory or quietly looking for a way out and what’s his plan and strategy to achieve that - not what he says publicly but what he really believes in the privacy of his own mind.

➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics

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This is a Conversation With James Paterson, a research associate at the Lowy's Institute, focusing on terrorism and jihadist organisations, about a new threat that is almost entirely ignored by the entire world but that is increasingly tearing through large parts of Africa - a growing jihadi insurgency, that is the fastest-growing terrorist threat in the world and that is threatening to literally overtake entire states in West Africa - and establish a new terror empire, overshadowing even the Islamic state.

We get into how the leading organisation and al-Qaeda affiliate, has built a shadow state across Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger and grown strong enough to strike the capital and kill a sitting defence minister, why the region is now sliding toward outright state collapse, and how the West got pushed out only for Russia's mercenaries to move in and then fail - and why Europe is directly exposed to the fallout from all of this - from spreading instability to a new wave of migration.

➡️ This is a clip from an interview with Michael McFaul. You can access the entire interview ad-free on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics
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➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics

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This is a conversation with Mark Galeotti, director of Mayak intelligence and one of the greatest living experts on modern Russia - and we talk about why, after years of remarkable stability, a lot of things in Russia are now beginning to crack. 

We get into what’s behind the sharpest fall in Putin's approval since 2022, why is there an increasing public criticism of the war and debate over whether it’s time for it to end or why the Kremlin's attempt to seize control of the internet triggered the biggest popular backlash of the entire war - and what's left holding the system together now that the old social contract between Putin and the Russian people is gone.

➡️ This is a clip from an interview with John Bolton. You can access the entire interview ad-free on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics

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