I'm John Thatcher with my colleague, Judy Dempsey, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Senior scholar, she's in Berlin.

The elections are Sunday.

Everything matters about those elections.

And we're in a zone where we can be surprised.

Right now it's 30 merits, 20, Vidal, 15 or 16 for both the Greens and the Socialists,

and it looks like a coalition will be formed without Vidal.

That's the presumption.

That's the common assumption now.

Well, we turn to the war in Ukraine because no matter the coalition, no matter of these results,

Germany's participation in a resolution of Ukraine is expected, is assumed.

But, Judy, a column in the Financial Times this morning uses a metaphor that looked suggestively disdainful, but at the same time made me smile.

It's entitled, Europe consigned a kids table in Ukraine peace talks, says a defense CEO, member of your defense industry.

The kids table is what we use in America for families getting

together on the weekend, and you feed the children first, and then they go off and play. That is

cruel, but it does appear that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin do not believe the EU is important

to have at the table.

Is that a blow to Germany? Have they talked about it in the election?

Well, Schultz doesn't want to discuss this because Schultz's attitude towards Ukraine has been

ambiguous. On the one hand, Germany can shove in billions of euros to support the Ukrainian economy,

but he won't shove in all the military equipment necessary for Ukraine, if it ever could, defeat Russia.

But no, this is just not about Germany.

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