Robert Gates: “no higher priority in the Department of Defense, apart from the war itself, than taking care of our men and women in…”

He wants Ukraine, basically, to be a client state of Russia.

the only way I could get significant new or additional equipment to commanders in the field in weeks or months--not years--was to take control of the problem myself through special task forces and ad hoc processes.

Putin feels that he has a destiny to recreate the Russian Empire.

I think the president is — based on what I read — is getting the sense that, as he put it, that Putin is 'tapping' him along.