Oliver Crook

But at the end of the day,

I'm not really in a position to say whether or not we're any closer to a resolution for this war.

I don't imagine that this is something you can just hammer out in a couple of summits.

The first round of talks was on February the 6th.

This is only the second round of talks.

When you think about the difficulty and the diplomacy here required in order to strike a deal, this is not something that is likely to happen overnight.

That being said, we have been surprised in the past that

by Trump foreign policy efforts that have yielded something that was completely unexpected.

We think, of course, of the truce or the ceasefire that was arrived at between the Israelis and Hamas, which really is something that at first I think there was very little optimism could really be achieved and then suddenly sort of came into fruition rather quickly.

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.

Bloomberg's Oliver Crook now standing by with Senator Alyssa Slotkin.

The Democrat from Michigan has just arrived in Munich as part of a CODEL with some very important topics to discuss.

Oliver, thanks for bringing us this conversation.

Over to you.

Sources say the options now under consideration include providing Ukraine with the protections that come with EU accession up front, as well as immediate access to some membership rights.

At the same time, the bloc would give Ukraine a clear time frame, as well as outline the steps it needs to take in order to advance through the formal accession procedure, which normally takes many years and requires the backing of all member states.

A draft peace plan anticipates EU membership in 2027, with Kiev receiving some benefits from membership in the interim.