Hello everyone and welcome to Amunpur here's what's coming up.

There's so many crises that seem to come out of nowhere and you wonder whether you're good enough.

Frank admissions from the EU's first foreign policy chief.

Catherine Ashton joins me on negotiating with Putin and why she didn't like her job.

Then, well I don't have anything to prove, you see.

I'm not trying to make it.

Acting legend Sir Ian McKellen serves up the fun on

stage as Mother Goose in a hilarious and very British pantomime. Plus journalist

Julia Joffi talks to Walter Isigson about Putin's plans to inflict pain on the West. Welcome to the program everyone. I'm Christina Wancour in London.

Europe is welcoming Ukraine's president Valodomir Zelensky with open arms

applauding the wartime leader even as he pushes and pushes

them for more powerful weapons. It is an extremely rare visit overseas for Zelensky after

his surprise touchdown in Washington DC

just before Christmas. It's been nearly one year now since Vladimir Putin brazenly

tried to take Kyiv and the rest of Ukraine.

But in reality, the Russian offensive has been going on for much longer than that.

It was nine years ago in 2014 that Putin invaded an annex Crimea spurring an international crisis.

Catherine Ashton was Europe's foreign policy chief at the time.

Her new book is called And Then then what, inside stories of 21st century diplomacy.

And she tells me all these years on, Putin is still trying to run circles around the West.

Baroness Ashton, welcome to the program.

Thank you.

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