Hello, this is the Red Box Podcast. I'm Matt Chawley, clear the news absolutely dominated

by what's happening in Ukraine right now. You can also keep across what's actually happening

news by tuning into Times Radio or bringing you all of the latest. What we're doing on

the podcast today is looking at a manual McLean. He's very much the man of the moment.

He was the one who tried to broker peace. He went and sat opposite Vladimir Putin on that

very long table. He even claims to have agreed a summit between Russia and America and then

all went horribly wrong. Vladimir Putin giving that extraordinary speech, littered with lies about

the history of Ukraine. Now it seems the invasion is underway. So what we thought we'd do is take

a look at the man of a Crohn's role in all of this as he's poised to launch his re-election campaign

in the French presidential elections. That's our big thing on the podcast today. First, don't we kick

off with our columnist panel and on a Tuesday? It must be. Meet the Cerberus of Colomists,

the Janus of Journalism and the ultimate political portmanteau of opinion.

Finkelvich with Daniel Finkelstein and David Aronovich on Times Radio.

David, your assessment of where we are this morning with Ukraine.

Let me stand in lieu of a gigantic array of experts from Brookings and this international

institution and that international firm of risk assessors and so on. The thing that we're waiting

to discover, I think just at this moment, is whether the Russians intend to try and take that part

of the Luhansk and Donetsk oblast. There's regions in the east that some majority are not controlled

by the rebels who they've decided to recognize or help the rebels to do so in which case that

becomes outright war with Ukraine and then anything can happen. And that's the thing that we don't

know yet. It seems quite likely or quite possible that that would happen.

Dani? Well, in 2014 when there was the last revolution in Ukraine, some of the demonstrations

...