John Mearsheimer

And I think EU expansion is probably a no-no for the Russians because most people don't recognize this, but there is a military dimension, right?

built into EU expansion.

It's not purely an economic alliance or relationship or institution, whatever word you want to use.

There's a military dimension to that.

And in the run-up to the war, actually in the run-up to the 2014 crisis when it first broke out, the Russians made it clear they saw EU expansion as a stalking horse for

for NATO expansion.

So EU expansion is tricky.

But I think your point of close economic relations between, or healthy economic relations, to use a better term, between Ukraine and the West is possible.

I think the Russians have a vested interest in, if it's a neutral Ukraine, they have a vested interest in that Ukraine flourishing.

But that then brings us back to the territorial issue, right?

I think leadership matters here.

I mean, one of the real problems here is that there's no trust on the Russian side, and that has to do with the Minsk Agreements.

The Minsk Agreements, which were designed to shut down the civil war in eastern Ukraine, in the Donbass.

really mattered to the Russians.

And there were four players involved in the Minsk process, four main players, Russia and Ukraine, of course, and then Germany and France.

And I believe the Russians took the Minsk Accords seriously.

I believe Putin took them very seriously.

He wanted to shut down that conflict.

Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande, he was the French leader, and Poroshenko, who was the Ukrainian leader.

Those were the three key players besides Putin.