From the Centre for European Reform, this is the CEO podcast.

It is a critical moment. If we do not act with urgency, we would then severely undermine the liberal order.

Brexit means Brexit, and we're going to make a success of it.

The wind is back in Europe's sales.

We have now a window of opportunity, but it will not stay open forever.

Hello and welcome. My name is Christina Parenti and the Clara O'Donnell Fellow at the Center for European Reform.

And this week we are discussing Western policies towards Russia with Jan Bond, our foreign policy director.

Hi, Jan.

Hi.

Exactly six years ago, Russia formally annexed Crimea almost a month after it began the armed intervention in Ukraine. Since then, Russia has

been continued its military aggression in Ukraine's Donbass and in Syria. It has also intervened in Libya,

and on the top of this, Russia's meddling in democratic processes of the Western states,

extraterritorial killings of Kremlin's enemies and spreading disinformation. And yet, some

Western leaders are increasingly inclined to defrost relations with French President

Emmanuel Macron being a notable example. How would you explain this, Jan?

Well, there are two points here. The first is that most Western leaders have quite a short attention span.

They like to see things moving and the relationship with Russia has not been moving for some years.

And they're impatient.

They think that this is an unnatural state of affairs and so they would like to reset to improve things.

The second thing is that they all have a high opinion of their diplomatic skills

and their ability to tell a story that will persuade Vladimir Putin to change the way that he looks at the world.

And that's a problem that I think goes right back to Tony Blair in 2000.

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