I'm John Batchel with my colleague, Judy Dempsey, a senior scholar for the Carnegie Endowment for International Pichies in Berlin.

Looking to the Hague, Judy mentioned earlier.

This is a meeting of the leaders when there are doubts about the way forward in Ukraine.

The Kremlin has delivered a memo that is maximum demands, and the word non-starter

is used repeatedly. At the same time, there are questions about American leadership in NATO

and the Europeans responding to the demand of the American leaders that they increase their

defense spending.

At this point, Judy, that it will change week to week.

There's no fixing this.

But the anticipation is that things are okay, but there's no winning formula right now.

There's just holding on.

What is it from the German point of view they're watching for in the hay?

What are the expectations?

The expectations are about damage limitation.

That they can,

they won't provoke Donald Trump.

They will, let's put it rather bluntly, they will massage as eager by saying we're

doing our best to increase the spending and you're right.

A great country like the United States giving us the security we need and we're doing

our best to reciprocate by spending more and so on. This is the

first thing. Secondly, given the recent Polish election, Trump is now intending to increase

the presence of US forces in parts of Poland, which is a big plus for Poland. It's defense spending.

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