Joe Inwood

Now, we understand that those proposals have been put to him in person today.

And that what we assume that they will be discussed with the European leaders.

But as you say, there is a sort of a building pressure from the Americans to try and force Ukraine into some sort of concession.

And that will take many forms, but most notably, I think, limits on the size of their armed forces and the idea of ceding territory in the east of Ukraine to Russia in order to get some sort of peace deal.

There's been an awful lot of controversy about one particular boat strike on the 2nd of September, where it was struck a second time.

There are two ways of looking at this.

Either that is because there genuinely is progress being made and things really have been agreed.

That would be the positive interpretation.

Or the other way of looking at it is it is inevitable he's going to be positive, even if nothing was agreed.

Because one of the things that Kiev needs to be seen to be doing...

is to be contributing towards talks.

If President Zelensky is seen by the US administration, by Donald Trump, as being in some way opposed to peace, opposed to a deal, well, he risks incurring his wrath.

And we've seen what happens when you get Donald Trump coming at President Zelensky.

People remember the White House confrontation.

It was not pretty, and it actually had real consequences for Ukraine on the battlefield.

Yeah, it's really interesting you say that.

It's notable now, whenever you see any statement from a European leader, they go out of their way to praise Donald Trump, even when it doesn't seem necessarily appropriate at that time.

They are very, very keen to emphasise to the White House that they appreciate what he is doing in order to find peace.

And there really clearly are efforts being made.

In terms of the meeting on Monday between Friedrich Merz of Germany, Emmanuel Macron of France and Sakhir Starmer of the UK, along with President Zelenskyy,