I'm John Batson with my colleague Mary Kissel, Executive Vice President Stevens,

Incorporated, former senior advisor to the Secretary of State, many years in Asia for the Wall Street

Journal. Right now we're turning to Europe because Mary traveled with the Secretary Pompeo

through these very same troubled corridors.

The Ukraine war is now turning into a negotiation or not, a posture of belligerence or not,

war fighting through the winter or not. Certainly Mr. Trump, the President-elect,

has talked about a negotiation. Mr. Zelensky over these

last days has made remarks that are very difficult to interpret, saying that, yes, we'll go along with

negotiation and a partition country if we're given membership of NATO, which is a no-go from the

first by Moscow. That was said to

be the trigger, and Moscow sees this as a war between NATO and the Russian Federation.

Mary, Mr. Zelensky has to take into account that his country is exhausted and there's a new

administration. What is your understanding of what his remarks mean?

Does he believe he can negotiate, come to the table, or is he a maximalist still?

Well, I think what you're seeing is a direct reaction to the election of President Trump.

And both Vladimir Putin and Zelensky understand that President Trump ran on a platform of achieving a peace in Ukraine

and that he means what he says and who will employ carrots and sticks to get there.

So I think Zelensky shifting his position to indicate that he would be open to some sort of settlement, which accompanied

by NATO membership is, I think it's certainly giving up territory, which is something that

he didn't want to do in the past. But I don't think that Native membership is achievable. So I don't,

I don't really know how these two sides are going to come to the table.

And it'll be interesting to see how these negotiations go. There will be several players involved.

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