I'm John Batchel with Bill Roger, my colleague and co-host and John Hardy of the FD.

Quickly, Bill, before I turn to you for a question.

John, my memory of the spring of 22 is the Russian said these four provinces,

Harrison, Saperesia, Dornetsk, and Luhansk, Crimea, denatification, demilitarization, no NATO, and new elections.

I remember all those major points.

Is that what they repeated at Istanbul last week?

So the elections, to my knowledge, were not part of it last time around. I think in general, their demands

are much the same with the kind of wrinkle that the situation on the ground is different now.

So while the Russians control a bit more of the Natsko blast, et cetera, in general, the amount of

territory they control now is much less,

given that they've withdrawn from the area around Kiev back in spring 2022. And Ukraine is in

a better position militarily. The Ukrainians are less reliant on Western support than they

were at that point in the war.

And, you know, Russia has very little prospect of making, of taking additional large swaths of the country.

So I think, you know, right now that there's really no reason for the Ukrainians to capitulate on their, on their red lines, which include no restrictions on Ukraine military,

defense industrial base, no kind of permanent forswearing of joining NATO or other military

alliances and, you know, no changes to, basically no Russian meddling in internal Ukrainian affairs.

So I think the Ukrainians are in a pretty good position and just remains to be seen whether

the United States will begin to put more tangible leverage on the Russians.

Bill, you have a question. We have a couple of minutes.

Yeah, John. So there's a big debate, you know, has been since this war began,

is, you know, is this a territorial war, war to gain territory, or is it a war of the Russians

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