Oliver Crook

I think that the sort of expectations are fairly low from, you know, the sort of renewed effort with the trilateral talks that involve the United States, the Ukrainians and the Russians, where basically this is the third meeting in about three weeks.

So there certainly has been an increase of the cadence of these sort of negotiations.

That being said, again, you listen to Marco Rubio while he's been in Munich, while he's been in Budapest over the last couple of days.

He's basically saying some days I feel better about it than others, but at the end of the day, you know, I'm not really in a position to say whether or not we're any closer to a resolution for this war.

The India trade deal, this is something that Ursula von der Leyen and the European Union really want to take a victory lap on because India is notoriously one of the nations with the highest trade barriers across the world.

And what the EU is now saying is that their companies will have preferential access to that market.

So I'll give you just the top line of kind of what we can expect here.

They say that it will eliminate or reduce tariffs on 96.6% of EU goods that are exported to India.

The EU will also eliminate in return or reduce tariffs on 99.5% of goods that go into the EU.

Now that we basically have solidified those security guarantees from the United States to the Ukrainians for the post-war, but that's for the day after.

The day today is still dealing with that one fundamental issue, those territorial concessions, the Russians wanting all of the Donbass to basically be given to the Russians, despite the fact that they do not control at all.

It is very hard to see how to break through that impasse.

Now that we basically have solidified those security guarantees from the United States to the Ukrainians for the post-war, but that's for the day after.

The day today is still dealing with that one fundamental issue, those territorial concessions, the Russians wanting all of the Donbass to basically be given to the Russians, despite the fact that they do not control at all.

It is very hard to see how to break through that impasse.

The aim here for the Americans is to get all three of these sitting at the same table, the Ukrainians, the Russians, and the Americans.

Not clear if that is going to happen.

It might be bilateral talks, two pairs of them that we've seen in the past where basically the U.S.

functions as a go-between where they have talks with the Ukrainians, talks with the Russians, and then they sort of try to bridge the gaps.

So that's what we're going to be looking for.