Welcome to the Euro Intelligence Podcast. I'm Wolfgang Munchau and with me are Zuzana Muncheng and Jack Smith.

Today we would like to talk about the EU and its neighboring countries and especially Ukraine and the UK.

We would like to lump those two countries together because they pose existential issues or important issues for the EU in the future in terms of

accession arrangements or future bilateral relationships. I've written in the New Statesman

this week a column about the Finnish Winter War and parallels with the Ukraine war. I envisage

a kind of a dirty deal through this war will end that will give some

territorial gains to Putin, but give Ukraine the certainty of NATO membership and EU membership.

So not a deal that anyone would be enthusiastic about. It's possible that it may fail for so many

reasons, but it's certainly a way, and and we've heard that Stoltenberg's office

had in public discussing these issues, so we know that this is certainly on the agenda of the

policy debate.

We're also hearing this from senior-placed generals at the EU and in Germany.

They are discussing similar scenarios as they're seeing or as they're becoming increasingly

skeptical that the Ukraine counteroffensive would result in Ukraine regaining all of the occupied

territories. I believe they will regain some of them. They have had some successes this

week. I would not draw any of early conclusions of how the military campaign will evolve.

But I'm fairly confident to predict that with the current Western level of support,

that Ukraine will not be able to reconquer all of the territories currently occupied by Russia.

The separate question is the UK, and we wrote about this in today's briefing.

And there's been in the UK media, there's an occasional about whether or is the UK, and we wrote about this in today's briefing, and we, you know,

there's been in the UK media, this is an occasional about whether or not the UK can

rejoin the EU.

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