Welcome to the Euro Intelligence Podcast. I'm Wolfgang Munchau and with me are Susanna Monshank and Jack Smith.

Today we would like to talk about the shift in perceptions and maybe also the shift in reality

in the war in Ukraine and about Europe transatlantic relations and in particular how the EU defines itself or increasingly defines itself in terms of

the United States. Let's start our debate on Ukraine. Jack, how do you see the shift happening?

Not so much of ship on the ground. Militaryly, this is always very difficult to say anything intelligent,

but the shift in Western diplomacy and the shift sort of in perceptions in Western capitals.

I think that it's gone back and forth a little bit, but some positions are starting to become a little clearer.

Well, the first thing I'll say about this, right, and it's an important nuance to discuss, is that I don't think that anybody is only ever going to kind of have one option. Whenever you're dealing

with these sorts of situations, you know, diplomatically speaking, you might have a number of

different outcomes that you're trying to price in. All of the actors involved, whether it's the

US, whether it's the EU, whether it's the individual EU member states, the UK, or even Ukraine

themselves, they'll have multiple possibilities, which they think

about in terms of desirability versus less desirability, achievability versus less achievability and

stuff. So first, to preface this, it's important to kind of get that nuance. I think there

has been a bit of a kind of maybe firming up of positions, and this is very natural given

the fact that we've gone from a position where the outcome was highly uncertain at the very

beginning. And even though it's still quite uncertain, there are still more knowns now. For instance,

I think we all kind of comfortably know that it is highly unlikely that Russia will be able to actually topple the government in Kiev.

This seems to be way, way, way beyond their capabilities.

There was some talk towards the end of last year about Russia trying to launch another February 2020 style offensive on Kiev and other major Ukrainian cities.

But I think the consensus is that Russia does not

have the military strength to do that. So that's one. Another thing is, I think what becomes obvious

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