Hello, I'm Paige and this is the Eurointelligence podcast covering current affairs in the EU and Euro area.

I'm joined by Wolfgang and Susanna, directors of Eurointelligence in Oxford.

So we're leading this week with Russia and what Putin is up to in Ukraine and Belarus.

Susanna, you've been writing about it this week.

Why should all eyes be on the Suvalchi corridor?

So this is a borderline between Poland and Lithuania.

It's 113 kilometers long.

And when you look to the east, there's this bordering with Belarus.

And when you look to the west, it's Kaliningrad, which is former Koeniksberg, a German Konigsberg, which was taken

over by the Russians in 1945 after World War II. So principally, this is Russian, and they have

all sorts of links with Russia. They have visa travels assured to Kaliningrad. So now, why is this important in this current climate?

We had this week, we had the visit of the President Lukashenko from Belarus.

That guy. Yes, that guy. And the outcome of the meeting with Putin was that they agreed on a political union on 26-27 chapters, the roadmaps they call it, for further cooperation on administrative level or governance level.

Explicitly, what it has not been tackled or what they couldn't agree on was on taxation.

And according to the Belarus state-owned news agency also on defense. So everyone was watching this meeting

with expectations that this would be like either the worst-case scenario, annexation or an

enfilus, and in the best case, denier for an economic agreement only.

In terms of time frame, they aim for concluding the full political union, which is part of

what Russia asks someone to do in order for them to guarantee that their energy prices will be discounted.

So Belarus gets their energy into 90% or something like that from Russia,

and they get a discounted price.

So Russia said last year, I think it was last year, no, two years ago.

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