It has amazed me for years as a Cold War vet that the USA allows countries like the Baltic pigmies (with a combined population that is less than LA County) to have influence in NATO. Do you think Trump would join/start a hot war after Russia demonstrates deterrence by hitting Latvia, Lithuania and/or Estonia?

Hi, Mark. Thank you for everything you do. A couple of years ago, I would have expected that movement on all fronts would increase dramatically after the Russian army moved past those areas of Ukraine that had hardened positions. As this is about to happen, it now seems that, because of much expanded drone capabilities of Ukraine, progress will be slower than previously expected. Is this correct? Can any reasonably hoped for further changes speed it up some?

Hi Mark! This time I have a question with a bit of a "devil's advocate" vibe to it. As a fellow Russian resident, how do you find the actual current economic situation in Russia? How likely (or unlikely) it is that Russian government is lying through its teeth and the actual economic situation is in fact a lot worse than the official figures suggest? For instance, this whole GDP contraction thing, which, after a hard reprimand by Putin himself, suddenly turned out to be a lot smaller than it was initially reported - and recently has been found even smaller still - looks quite suspicious. Same goes for the budget deficit figure - couldn't the very fact that it is out there suggest that the overspending has become just too great to hide completely?

Would love to hear your most cynical perspective on this.

And one more question - this time about drone warfare.Recently there have been many reports about increasingly massive Russian missile/drone strikes into Ukraine. However I don't seem to be hearing a lot about any tangible results of those strikes. For comparison, throughout the past winter we've been constantly hearing about blackouts in Ukrainian towns. At some point however those reports disappeared and... weren't quite replaced with anything new. Is my impression correct, or am I just completely missing all the info? If the information about the results of recent strikes is out there, could you please make a brief overview?