All right, Alexander, let's talk about the diplomacy between the United States and Russia.

Once again, the diplomacy between Trump and Putin, and maybe we can also talk about the

lack of diplomacy between the European Union and Russia. So let's start out with Trump and Putin.

What's going on here?

Well, I do think anybody completely can figure this out,

but we've had more comments from both Putin and Trump over the last couple of days.

Putin had an unusually difficult press conference in Tajikistan, in Dushanbe,

where he was quite obviously being challenged over the Tomahawk missiles and other things,

and I got the clear sense that the rush, well, there was no clear sense about it. It was absolutely clear

that he was running into

problems now challenges from sections of the Russian media. He is trying still to keep some kind

of door open to Donald Trump. In our last program, we pointed out how more hardline figures in Russia are starting to say

enough and enough.

We had Seregelyabka, the Deputy Foreign Minister, saying that the entire momentum created

by the Anchorage Summit had stalled.

We've had further strong comments from the, from Lavrov and from other Russian

officials. Putin, however, was then challenged about all of these comments. His closest

officials, the officials closest to him, Usherkhov and Peskov, were asked about this.

They did the extraordinary thing, most unusual thing, of to some extent, well, clearly pushing

back against what Ryabkov had reported to the Duma.

They said, no, it hasn't stalled. We've still got problems. The Ukrainians

aren't showing any interest in negotiations, but Anchorage is not exhausted. And then Putin gave a

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