Hello and welcome to Battleground with me, Patrick Bishop and Saul David. Well, first of all, apologies for long silence from me. That is, of course,

if anyone actually noticed, I've had some health issues which are now happily resolved.

But it looks like I'm reporting back to duty at a pretty good time, A, Saul.

Yes, I would say your timing is immaculate, Patrick, because after months of rollercoaster diplomacy,

that have been almost impossible to interpret in real time, it seems that things are

finally coming to a head. And will either result in some sort of ugly and unjust deal between

Donald Trump's White House, Vladimir Putin's Kremlin and Vladimir Zelenskyy's Kiev, or,

and I think this is more likely personally, Patrick, Putin will

overplay his hand and give America no option but to back Ukraine and increase the economic

and military pressure on Russia, where all that will lead, nobody knows yet.

Yeah, well, I think there's a lot to talk about here, isn't there, Saul? I think this morning,

looking at some of the

reactions that perhaps, you know, the consequences of this finally agreed mineral steel that was

signed in Washington as we speak last night, I think the optimism that has been kind of billowing

out of that development may be a bit overplayed.

We may be on the same page on that one.

But anyway, let's have a look at what actually was agreed.

Now, this, of course, is, you know,

it's significant because it's the first real shift in this log jam,

this diplomatic logjam that's been holding everything up

and getting in a way of Trump's burning desire to get some sort

of peace deal, whatever its actual significance and consequences are. So basically, this is now

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