This is John Batchel, conversation with colleague Mary Kissel, former senior advisor of the Secretary of State, about the negotiation over Ukraine that has taken several sharp turns.

The question is, what advantage or disadvantage having counselors for the president and not the State Department and not the

foreign ministries of their European allies get involved right away about the document,

about the risk, about going forward. Here Mary analyzes all of this with the possibility

that it might work, but still, the Europeans are threatened.

Much more of this tonight.

Well, the State Department isn't entirely cut out.

Rubio was sent to Geneva over this past weekend to take input from our European partners

and from the Ukrainians.

Where they were cut out was in the initial dealmaking.

And again, there could be rationalizations for that. Steve Wittkoff might think, well, the Europeans

haven't been helpful so far and they don't want us to act as a neutral party, therefore they're

not going to be of assistance here.

Of course, the problem, just to reference what I just said before, is the problem is that by doing so, you are giving an advantage to the aggressor and not the aggrieved by allowing them to shape the initial outlines of the document.

And that's a problem because it's like negotiating for a car.

Once you start on a price point, that's the price you negotiate around.

You can't just reset the price lower.

And so I think that's part of the cause of the European alarm and the Ukrainians' alarm is that, you know, can you really move very far off of the starting point?

But secondly, you know, you're right.

The Russians are not just negotiating with the Ukrainians by making war on them and committing war crimes and negotiating

privately with the U.S., that they're also trying to intimidate the Europeans by saying,

look, we can wreak havoc in your societies too. And of course, that is also the European alarm,

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