Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome, everybody, to the late show. I'm your host,

Stephen Colbert, and we, right now, is this true? Do I have this right? We are, we are

almost five weeks into Russia's three-day conquest of Ukraine. And while Putin's monstrous

war against the Ukrainian people continues to grind on, there have been some interesting

developments in the peace talks taken place down in Istanbul. Here's one thing, to signal

their willingness to compromise. The Russians have just announced that they will sharply

reduce military activity near Kiev, an area where, and I'm sure this is just a coincidence,

they're getting their ass handed to them by the Ukrainians. In a related story, nothing

to do to, in a related story from March Madness, after losing to North Carolina, St.

Peters has announced they will sharply reduce basketball activity near the final four. So,

so anyway, the peace talks continue. And today, we saw a few signs of progress, including

Ukraine's proposal for a 15-year process of negotiations about the status of Crimea. Now,

that's very clever. 15 years is a long time, and Putin's not a young man. In 15 years,

he's going to need one of those horses that goes upstairs. Okay? They advertise those

on Fox. Well, even though there's marginal progress, the bives at these meetings have

been very uneasy. There were reports that talks kicked off with no handshake, and Ukraine

warned its negotiator is not to eat, drink, or even touch anything. So, basically, New

York subway rules. All of us who live in the city, when you come here, you know, you guys know

when you move here, they teach you the rhyme. If it's red, stand instead. If it's brown, stay

downtown. If it's waxy, take a taxi. Ukraine has, as good reason to be cautious, because yesterday,

we found out that in earlier talks, Ukrainian peace negotiators showed signs of poisoning

after meeting the Russians. Poisoning peace negotiators, of course, reminds me of the classic

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