Russia attacks Romania: Ukrainian false flag or Russian warning shot?
Glenn Diesen interviews market analyst and author Alex Krainer on the drone incident in Romania and the broader escalation dynamics in the Russia-Ukraine war.
Summary
Glenn Diesen interviews Alex Krainer, a market analyst, author, and former hedge fund manager, to discuss a reported Russian drone strike on an apartment building in Romania, the possibility of Ukrainian false flag operations, and the broader trajectory of NATO-Russia escalation. Krainer argues the Romania incident almost certainly was not a Russian action, pointing to the pattern of previous Ukrainian false flags and the complete absence of any strategic logic for Russia to strike a NATO member in such a manner. He contends that Volodymyr Zelensky's regime, facing what Krainer describes as imminent military collapse, has strong incentives to manufacture a pretext for NATO's Article 5 to be invoked. Krainer also argues that Europe's severing of energy ties with Russia has been economically catastrophic for Germany and the continent, and that the driving force behind the war is not elected governments but an international banking cartel that views Russia's natural resources as collateral for wealth extraction. He sees no diplomatic off-ramp, arguing that even the Trump administration's initial MAGA-aligned figures have been purged and replaced with what he calls "Anglo-Zionist globalists."
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
The Romania drone incident: false flag or warning shot?
Alex Krainer: Over the past four years we've seen NATO incrementally escalating and incrementally undermining the credibility of Russian deterrence. Russian restraint and caution tends to be interpreted as weakness — that's what all the newspaper headlines are saying, that Russia doesn't have any red lines, that it doesn't dare to retaliate. Yet it appears that Russia's patience might be over, and the pressure to retaliate seems to be becoming very overwhelming.
It's very hard to cut through the propaganda and the information war, but we see now that the Russians are hitting Kyiv pretty hard. The Russians warned the Europeans and Americans to pull their diplomats out of Kyiv. We've seen some Ukrainian drones coming down over Latvia, and most recently there's news reporting that a Russian drone smashed into an apartment building in Romania. One can't be sure exactly what happened. Was this a Russian warning shot, or was this a false flag from the Ukrainian side? I wouldn't know — it could be both.
Glenn Diesen: How are you assessing these events? Are we seeing a rapid escalation? I think yesterday or the day before we had Volodymyr Zelensky send a letter to Trump which sounded pretty desperate, begging him to send Patriot PAC-3 air defense missiles because of these anticipated attacks on Kyiv. That suggests the Ukrainians are quite desperate — they have no defenses and they understand that the Russian attack is going to wreak a great deal of damage to the Ukrainian government and to the administration of their society.
Alex Krainer: I would be very surprised if, given the circumstances, the Russians thought it would be a great idea to slam a drone into an apartment building in Romania. What purpose would that serve? It wouldn't serve any good purpose for the Russians. It would serve a lot of good purposes for the Ukrainians, because I see Zelensky as a little bit panicked — he is seeing the writing on the wall, and it's very close to game over for him.
If Russia struck a NATO member country right now, that could be the grounds to invoke Article 5, to unite NATO, and to start a great big war that would bail Ukraine out — bail Zelensky's regime out. So if I were doing the investigation of this incident, my first suspect would be the Zelensky regime, not the Russians.
The Russians have been extremely careful not to give any NATO member country any pretext or reason to invoke Article 5. First, the Russians don't want that war — they don't want a war against a united NATO. Second, if they did strike a NATO member country, I think the first on the list would have to be Great Britain and then Germany. And if they really decided to strike Britain or Germany, they would probably be striking at military bases, at armaments manufacturing companies — they might be striking at things like MI6 headquarters — not at an apartment building and not with a drone. It would probably be with something heavy like a Kinzhal. So I would presume that this will prove to be a false flag attack.
It wouldn't be the first one by the Ukrainians. First, there were supposedly two Russian missiles fired at a farm in Poland — I think that was 2022 or 2023 — which turned out to be a false flag because the missiles were launched from Ukraine. Then there were Russian drones launched at Poland again, which turned out to be recovered Russian decoy drones — the styrofoam drones built to resemble Shahed drones to attract anti-air missile fire from Ukraine. They were scorched, fitted with duct tape, and then relaunched toward Ukraine in another attempt to trigger Article 5.
A drone launched at an apartment building in Romania — I would expect this is another attempt to achieve the same goal. It would be very handy for the Ukrainians to get the whole of NATO united on their side in this war, sending the cavalry. But it would serve no purpose for the Russians.
Also, attacking any country has the effect that the political spectrum condenses — people who feel they're under attack close ranks behind their leaders and become much more willing to go to war. This is exactly what the Russians would want to avoid, because they see that the European political class is disintegrating and the parties in power are losing support and continuing to lose it. So why would you give them this catalyzing event that would reverse all of that and make people more willing to go to war against Russia? The whole event makes zero sense to me as a Russian action. And if it was CNN that reported it was a Russian drone, you're better off believing the opposite, because it's very unlikely to be true.
Glenn Diesen: I was also thinking that if the Russians wanted to send some kind of warning shot with plausible deniability, one would nonetheless perhaps expect the target to be Latvia or Estonia. Romania does stand out a bit. So some healthy skepticism is probably a good idea on this one.
A few hours ago we also saw Dmitry Medvedev, the former president of Russia, make a comment where he again speaks to the citizens of the EU. He wrote: "Citizens of EU countries, you should realize your authorities have unilaterally entered into a war with Russia. So be vigilant and don't be surprised by anything — the peaceful sleep is over, but you know who to ask why."
He tends to play the bad cop to Putin's good cop, but the comment that EU leaders have started a war with Russia — I'm assuming this is largely about how European leaders are speaking very openly about the goal of striking deep into Russia, talking about mass-producing weapons, and of course the use of Baltic territories to attack Russia allegedly with Ukrainian drones. This is all essentially leading to at least the rhetoric that the EU has gone to war or attacked Russia directly. What do you think the Kremlin's perspective is? What actions by European governments do you think crossed the line from indirect involvement to — using Medvedev's language — entering into war with Russia?
Alex Krainer: If we rewind the clock about three or four years, we'll remember that there were careful deliberations about providing weapons to Ukraine. There came a time when they were talking about providing F-16s, and the discussion was: we cannot provide F-16s because F-16s can carry a nuclear warhead, and if we provide them with F-16s that could be a nuclear escalation and the Russians would be in their right to respond against us. So we shouldn't do this.
Right now it seems that all those holds have been removed, and now they're openly providing weapons to Ukrainians to strike into Russia. The British are practically bragging about it — bragging about providing Storm Shadow missiles to Ukrainians to strike into Russia. And it's well understood that you can't just provide those missiles; you also have to provide personnel to manage these strikes.
To make it more intuitive: if you were shooting at your neighbor's house to kill your neighbor and destroy their home, and I was bringing you bullets, I would rightly be perceived as a co-conspirator, as an accomplice. That makes me a legitimate target in the neighbor's defense and retaliation, and nobody could say I'm an innocent bystander. This is the position the European Union and NATO have assumed vis-à-vis the conflict with Russia.
Now, when it comes to warning shots, a warning shot would have to be a very smart kind of shot — for example, as the Iranians did a few days ago by striking a generator on a UAE nuclear power station. The warning was: look what we can do. We didn't want to damage your nuclear power station, we didn't want to cause an environmental disaster, but we want to show you that we can strike you, that we could strike you very accurately and at will. A smart warning shot hits something delicate and important but doesn't cause massive damage and doesn't cause casualties.
Slamming a drone into an apartment building strikes me as a particularly dumb kind of shot — and super dumb if it's intended as a warning shot. If we look at the history of Russian warfare, we see that they've been extremely judicious and extremely cautious about choosing their targets. They've exercised a great deal of restraint to not make the situation worse than it was. When they struck Kyiv a few days ago, reports varied, but there were between zero and two civilian casualties. That's not just randomly striking Kyiv and seeing what gets blown up — this was obviously very carefully targeted.
So I would expect this was a Ukrainian attempt at creating a false flag scenario, probably out of some sort of panic. If you wanted a well-planned false flag, it would have to be something that doesn't elicit doubts but instead elicits a strong emotional reaction — something like 9/11, where 3,000 Americans get killed. That's a proper false flag. This is not a proper false flag. This is maybe even a mistake.
Glenn Diesen: It should be noted that President Putin was asked about the drone and his first comment was essentially: "Well, who said this was a Russian drone?" — dismissing it. So one can't take anything at face value, but it is still worth noting that the Russians are saying it wasn't them, and as you said, there's been some precedent. One shouldn't jump to conclusions.
Belarus and the threat of a northern front
Glenn Diesen: Another issue within the realm of possible escalation has been comments coming out of Kyiv that Belarus might be planning to join the war. For this reason, the Ukrainians have been making comments that they might strike first. Last I saw, there were comments that they had already picked hundreds of targets in Belarus that are ready to be struck. How are you assessing this? If it happens, this would be a very dangerous area of escalation, because if the Ukrainians attacked Belarus — or if what Zelensky said about the Belarusians getting involved is true, which I find doubtful — it sounds like a very crazy escalation. The Europeans would probably get even more directly involved in an attack on Belarus, even though Russia has a nuclear deterrent there.
Alex Krainer: I did see some reports that there are troops grouping in Belarus to the north of Ukraine for an eventual assault on Kyiv. But these are not Belarusian troops — these are Russian troops in Belarus. I think the Ukrainians are very concerned that the Russians are preparing to deliver a final assault to finish this war, and that the danger is an assault from the north, like at the very beginning of the special military operation, going straight for Kyiv.
So they're not worried for nothing, but my understanding is that this is not Belarus's own army — these are Russian troops based inside Belarus.
Ukrainians might be panicking a little bit, and I don't know what purpose it would serve, even from their own point of view, to attack targets in Belarus, because that brings Belarus into the war. Now you're fighting two enemies on two fronts instead of just staging a defense of Kyiv. I think this is just a result of them panicking — lashing out and blowing things up. I really don't see what purpose it would serve.
The Baltic region as a potential flash point
Glenn Diesen: How about the Baltic region? To what extent do you think this could become a flash point? There are two things that worry me. First, there are now verified reports that Ukrainian drones are attacking through the Baltic states. Second, the Baltic Sea is quite important for Russian energy exports, and the EU has made several comments that reducing or targeting Russian energy exports would be a key strategy to reduce the money Russia has to spend on the war. Do you see any flash point there? Do you think the Russians have sent some signals, or is the EU pulling back?
Alex Krainer: There's no doubt that the Baltic region is being rigged as the next front in the war against Russia. We have to keep in mind this is not just a war between Russia and Ukraine over local disputes. This war has been orchestrated by Western powers in order to weaken, destabilize, and regime-change Russia.
There was full expectation that Russia would be defeated — that it would collapse, not just militarily, but also economically. The war started in February 2022, and then in March 2022 the West had all these pre-prepared sanctions — the biggest package of sanctions ever imposed upon any nation in history. They fully expected the Russian economy would collapse, leading to a social uprising, protests against the war and economic conditions, and that this could take down Vladimir Putin's government. But that didn't happen. They're losing the war and it's very clear they have no way of reversing that defeat.
We know they've already been trying to rig the Balkans as a second front, but that kind of fell apart since Donald Trump came into the White House. So I think the next second front would be the Baltic Sea and the Baltic states — but not only the Baltic states. The United Kingdom has created a new alliance called the Joint Expeditionary Force, uniting the navies of ten North European states including the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Baltic states, and the UK itself. The whole alliance functions from a London-based headquarters under British command. If you read their declarations and the documents that were signed, it's clearly done with a view to confronting Russia.
The time frame they've set is 2029–2030, because the big job is to synchronize their systems — every navy in this group has different systems, different ammunition, different weaponry, and the big work is to bring it all to the same standard so they can coordinate, use the same ammunition and spare parts, and function as a more viable fighting force. That cannot be done overnight.
So the idea of provoking Russia into a conflict by blockading its trade toward the Atlantic Ocean, restricting the flow of Russian ships and so forth — I think that cannot be done right now. If they provoked Russia into a conflict in the Baltic states prematurely, it could even destroy their alliance. If Russia marched into the Baltic states and took down Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, I think the Finnish people would have second thoughts about going to war against Russia.
I see that they are preparing this, but I don't think they will be ready in the near term. If you start a war before you're ready to fight it, all the pieces you're putting in place might end up wasted. So I think this conflict is not in the near term — but who knows? I could be wrong. I think the overarching panic spreading among NATO members could produce voices saying, "No, let's just get it started. We'll make things up as we go along."
Europe's energy severance and deindustrialization
Glenn Diesen: You mentioned the sanctions which were supposed to bring down Russia. I always made the point from the first day that this would be deeply problematic because the Russians had the ability to diversify their exports, while the Europeans did not have the ability to diversify their imports. So Russia would do well and the Europeans would not.
I find the whole scenario so absurd because I keep hearing European politicians talk about how they now have energy security because they've cut themselves off from Russia completely. Energy security is usually defined as an affordable and reliable supply of energy — you want many suppliers so it becomes a buyer's market, you drive the price down, and if anyone tries to apply political conditionality you can pivot to another supplier. But the European leaders seem to believe that cutting yourself off from your main supplier is energy security. As a result, Europeans deindustrialize, become weaker, fuel socioeconomic problems at home, face a political legitimacy crisis as leadership loses support, and then see the emergence of untested populist alternatives — all fueling instability. Meanwhile, Russian gas gets sent east, fueling the Chinese economy, and European companies follow the cheap Russian gas by relocating to China to stay competitive. The foolishness of this seems quite profound. But you're the market analyst — to what extent has Europe severing its economic ties with Russia fueled or reduced industrial competitiveness?
Alex Krainer: To a massive extent — an absolutely massive extent. If you look at the trend of industrial output in Germany, the curve went one way and then after 2022 it started going the other way. Month after month, quarter after quarter of declining German industrial output. Companies are announcing layoffs practically every month, and I think this month the layoff announcements were close to half a million jobs. That's absolutely catastrophic for Germany.
And it doesn't seem that there's any intent, desire, or willingness to try to reverse this — to say we made a mistake, we need to go speak with the Russians and restart the Nord Stream 2 pipelines. Whatever is left of them — one out of four tubes. The Russians have said one of the four tubes is still intact. Say the word and the gas will flow. But to them, that would be a defeat, an admission of failure. So they will rather sacrifice more hundreds of thousands of jobs in Germany and elsewhere in Europe than admit they made a mistake, and the whole continent is hostage to these people.
It's not just the quantities of energy available — it's also obviously the price, which makes European manufacturing completely uncompetitive. The trend is intact, it's entrenched, there's no reversal in sight, and I think it will continue.
But I also suspect this might be partly — or completely — by design. You can't really get a population to fight a war if they're affluent, if people see a bright future and have good career prospects. You need to immiserate people. You need to create very high levels of youth unemployment. Then you offer young men a military career and say: join the army and you'll be fine — you'll get a job, a pension, health insurance, all these perks, but you're going to have to go kill the Russians for us. When people are desperate, a military career might make sense.
Glenn Diesen: I often think that the massive corruption in Ukraine is not necessarily something the European leaders would want to get rid of, because if you didn't have this massive corruption, all this money being pumped in does help to steer the government in a direction it would otherwise not have taken. It's hard to believe the Ukrainian authorities would have continued this war to this extent without engaging in serious diplomacy with the Russians earlier — almost four and a half years in and still nothing.
But if the Europeans entered this war against Russia and it didn't escalate into a nuclear exchange, how prepared do you see the Europeans being for a long confrontation without US support?
Alex Krainer: They're not prepared at all. They have nothing. They have pitifully small armies that cannot fight a ground war. Without the Americans, they don't have the critical logistical facilities that would be required for such a war. There's questionable access to satellite intelligence, and when it comes to air defenses, they have largely disarmed themselves — they have something, but not nearly enough to counter Russia.
It's not anymore a question of intercepting some big expensive ballistic missiles. It's now hundreds, if not thousands, of cheap drones that are extremely effective and extremely destructive, and then many more thousands of even cheaper decoys — drones that look like the real thing, fly like the real thing, and sound like the real thing, but are just styrofoam mock-ups. You have to use a one-to-four-million-dollar missile to shoot at them, and the Russians can send wave after wave after wave of these until there are zero air defenses left.
Europe is not prepared at all. But it's not the European people who desire this war. It's people sitting in Wall Street banks and City of London banks and elsewhere — in Sweden, in France, in Germany — who want this war. And it is urgent enough for them that they will happily sacrifice Europe and many more millions of men for this war rather than give up and decide to explore a different business model.
Remember, they don't need to defeat Russia — that's not the idea. It's enough to bleed Russia, to weaken her, to destabilize the current government, and to try to bring in their own puppet president — a Juan Guaidó, a Volodymyr Zelensky, a Boris Yeltsin — who will then open the gates of Troy wide to Western banks and Western corporations, so they can take advantage of Russian wealth, Russian resources, and the Russian labor force. That's always the driving motivation behind all these wars.
Russia is the richest country in the world in terms of natural resources, with 144 to 150 million people — the most highly educated population in the world according to the OECD. That's the big glittering prize for them. They will never give up on it. So they will continue trying to invent wars, because for as long as these wars are continuing there's a chance that somehow they'll be able to overthrow Vladimir Putin, install their own puppet, and then loot Russia to the bone.
Germany's role and the occupied political class
Glenn Diesen: In this war against Russia, some of the usual suspects would have been quite predictable — as you often point out, the British always seem to be on the front lines of any campaign against Russia, and of course the Baltic states and Poland, one can argue from historical grievances, also tend to beat the war drums extra hard. But the one that has surprised me to a large extent has been Germany. They really seem to have gone all the way on this.
I still think about all those German generals who appeared on TV gloating when they saw German tanks entering Kursk, invading Russia itself, making references to World War II — that this was going to be humiliating because this is where they defeated the Germans last time and now the German tanks were back. How do you explain the German position? This goal of becoming the largest military in Europe, wanting to lead the campaign against Russia — I feel like I've seen this movie before, more than once.
Alex Krainer: I think we're primarily talking about the German quote-unquote elite, not the ordinary German people. We have to keep in mind that Germany has been an occupied country since World War II — occupied by the United States, Britain, and NATO in general. One of the things that happens to occupied countries is that their police, their secret police, and their intelligence apparatus are all very tightly controlled. Germany is perhaps the European country under the most rigid censorship regime. Their secret police and intelligence agencies deal extremely harshly with dissidents, and as a result German people are generally afraid to speak.
I live in Monaco, in the south of France. You can always get a good conversation out of a French person, an Italian, a Croatian, and so forth. But when I'm in Germany, I'm struck by how very afraid people are to talk. And when they do talk, it doesn't matter where you are — they immediately go into whispering. If they have anything half-controversial to say, they practically whisper and look around.
So I think that among German people there's generally a fear of the authorities, and they are very silent, while the governing circles — the pro-war side of German society — are very loud and very boisterous. They give the impression that Germany wants to go back to the 1930s, but I don't think that's really true. Except, if the people are quiet, if the people don't push back, they risk becoming Ukraine — they risk really having to sacrifice their youth to this war machine, as has already happened.
Glenn Diesen: I think that's probably fair. In Germany, Merz is now probably the most unpopular leader in the world, so to assign these ideas to all Germans is probably not reasonable.
Is there any diplomatic off-ramp?
Glenn Diesen: I just want to ask a last question. Do you see any possible off-ramp at this point, or any diplomatic breakthrough? The whole EU strategy of restarting diplomacy appears to be going nowhere. First they would have to agree to talk to Russia, then they would have to agree on who should represent the EU, and then they would have to agree on conditions. So far what we've heard from people like Kaja Kallas — who in the past has argued for Russia to be broken into smaller countries — is that there's no point talking to Russia because she doesn't talk to dictators. She's outlined that she would like to see Russia not just pulling back from all territories, but also accepting that Ukraine should be allowed to join NATO, and of course Russia should pay reparations and reduce the size of its army. It sounds like the terms of unilateral capitulation on the side of Russia — which is a strange thing to demand when you're losing the war. Given that the ability to do diplomacy is so damaged, do you see an off-ramp? Because I feel we're going up an escalation ladder that could be very dangerous.
Alex Krainer: Unfortunately, Glenn, I do not see an off-ramp. This wasn't some kind of great misunderstanding. The war in Ukraine was the result of an agenda that has been afoot for many, many decades.
If you go back to before World War II ended, the British already produced something called Operation Unthinkable. When they realized that Germany — which they had incubated, built up, militarized, and Nazified to become the bludgeon to wield against the Soviet Union — had lost the war, they proposed to FDR, or possibly Truman, a plan. This happened before World War II ended, in April 1945. Operation Unthinkable proposed using the remaining German troops, American and British troops, and Polish troops to mount a surprise attack against the Soviet Union. If you read the document, they knew it was a bit of a long shot, that it wasn't likely to succeed quickly, and that if they couldn't subjugate and destroy the Soviet Union by a rapid surprise attack, then the alternative would be a very long-term process — preparing for the next assault on Russia would take decades.
So immediately after — a year later, in 1946 — after the Allies had beaten Nazi Germany together, the Soviet Union, the United States, France, and Britain having been allies, Winston Churchill declares the Soviet Union as the enemy of the West. In 1948 starts the formation of NATO, and then it keeps expanding — all toward the east, all in the direction of Russia. They move NATO more than a thousand kilometers toward Russia. Not only do they move the borders of NATO toward Russia, they also concentrate troops and arsenals in the east, in the vicinity of Russia.
Then almost immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO goes into Ukraine and into Georgia. Ukraine already signs a declaration of a distinctive partnership between NATO and Ukraine — signed in Madrid in 1997. From then on starts the gradual process of NATO slowly militarizing and weaponizing Ukraine, in the same way they did with Germany in the 1930s.
So I think we shouldn't be looking for answers among our elected leaders or our diplomats. We shouldn't expect them to show any reason. We need to trace whatever incentive is guiding this ceaseless, relentless hostility toward Russia to where it actually originates. And you already know what I'm going to say — it originates with the international banking cartel, because what they see in Russia is collateral. Collateral on the basis of which they can generate a massive credit impulse and create assets that directly enrich them, that directly suck wealth from wherever it's produced into their own banking systems. Then they buy media, they pay the think tanks, they buy the politicians, they co-opt the military generals, and so forth.
So we have this great big machinery buzzing non-stop, creating this psychosis of war — that we have to go to war, we have to defeat Russia, we have to dismember Russia, Balkanize it into five different parts or twenty-seven different parts depending on who you ask. And so it's not down to who we elect or whether our foreign diplomats are complete morons or intelligent people. It's down to these incentives that are driving the whole system forward.
In the case of the Trump administration in the United States, you saw that it kind of started off in a promising way. You had Tulsi Gabbard there, you had Joe Kent there, and you had a whole number of people who were genuinely MAGA and wanted to change the course of US policy. But when push came to shove, these banking and money interests prevailed and they shook out all these patriotic MAGA members of the cabinet. What happens? Joe Kent leaves because he disagrees with the war on Iran. Who takes his place? Sebastian Gorka — who is like a certifiable British agent and an arch-Zionist. So there's been a purge of the nationalistic, patriotic element in the government, replaced with Anglo-Zionist globalists.
We have to assume that can happen to any democracy in Europe particularly. So even if they get defeated in Ukraine, they will not stop preparing the next war. And it's always going to be to try to destroy Russia. We also have to keep in mind that if they remove Russia from the map, their next target is China — and they will very likely use Russia, its weaponry, its troops, its very powerful military, to destroy China for them, in the same way they used Ukraine's military, which they built up, to try to destroy Russia.
This juggernaut will never stop until it's completely destroyed. Now, if parties like the AfD in Germany, Rassemblement National in France, and other patriotic movements in different nations come to power, that's going to complicate things very badly for them. But they will not stop trying. Their main asset in Europe is Germany, so they will fight hardest for political control of Germany. Germany alone will not be able to go to war against Russia — they'll have to create alliances again, which will be complicated because Germany is not in good relations with Poland, nor with France, nor with its northern neighbors.
So the pressure is to keep Ukraine fighting, to keep NATO and the European Union intact somehow, in order to prepare the next stage of the war by the end of this decade. We'll see if they succeed. To me, it looks like things are disintegrating faster than they can scotch them back together — but they will not give up.
It's not going to be an off-ramp where somebody is going to be reasonable and say, "Well, it looks like we lost here, so maybe we need to have a peace agreement with Russia, an armistice — turn a new page, cooperate, be friendly neighbors, and do business to mutual benefit." I don't think that's coming so soon.
Glenn Diesen: I think the way the whole peace platform was dismantled at such great speed has awoken a lot of people. As you said, the fact that they got Tulsi Gabbard and Joe Kent both out of the Trump administration — which is good for fighting the Iranians — and also how quickly Trump went from pushing to end the war, the lecture he gave Zelensky in the Oval Office, to where he is now, essentially almost identical to Biden. It's not shocking, but to some extent it is. Anyways, Alex, thank you so much as always for taking the time.
Alex Krainer: Thank you for having me, Glenn. Until the next time, have a good weekend.