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Good morning from the Financial Times.

Today is Wednesday, March 30th, and this is your FT News Briefing.

Russia and Ukraine are working towards a peace agreement. We'll hear what skeptics are saying.

Barkley's is paying a hefty price for a clerical error.

Plus, Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine is rippling through the global economy.

The FT's Martin Wolf suggests how governments might respond.

They should target their fiscal support on the poorest.

These are the people who are going to be worst hit by these massive rises in prices of energy and food.

I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day.

Moscow said it will dramatically scale back its military activities around

Kiev, Ukraine's capital.

Yesterday's announcement by a top Russian military official came after the latest round of peace talks in Istanbul.

The FT's Ben Hall says Western countries are taking the announcement with a grain of salt.

So I think what the Russians claim they were trying to do was to build trust around those talks

and that this signal was intended to build confidence and build momentum behind these talks, I suppose.

At the end of the day, there is a huge amount of skepticism about Russia's game here with these

talks. Are they really committed to finding a peaceful way out or then to the fighting?

Or are they just playing for time to allow them to regroup and to reorient their military

and potentially to focus their fight on the east?

So I think it's very unclear exactly what the Russians have in mind.

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