Welcome to Pushback. I'm Erin Mate.

Joining me is Nikolai Petro. He is Professor of Politics at the University of Rhode Island,

editor of Ukraine in Crisis, speaking to us now from Odessa Ukraine. Professor Petro, welcome to pushback.

Thank you. Nice to be here.

As we're speaking, the Biden-Puton summit in Geneva has concluded, I'm just curious your

overall takeaway from this meeting.

I was a pessimist going in. I'm glad that things turned out as well as they did.

And how did they turn out well in your eyes?

They turned out well because they set up the preconditions for what would be a fundamental change in the relationship,

were all the things that were mentioned by the two participants realized.

That fundamental change would be moving from viewing the relationship to the United

States and Russia as a zero-sum relationship, where if one side wins, the other side has

to lose, into something, into the type of relationship that both countries could benefit from.

All right, so let's go through some of the key flashpoints because I heard both Putin and Biden

described the meeting as cordial, but in terms of actual progress on all the issues that have

been, that have put these two countries at odds, I didn't hear much to give me an indication of progress.

Let's start with where you are, Ukraine.

Both Putin and Biden committed to a process based on the Minsk Accords.

But we've heard that before.

So maybe if you could explain to us what the Minsk Accords mean,

what has stalled the implementation of them so far,

and whether you think there's going to be any breakthrough on that front

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