The Economist.

Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist.

I'm Jason Palmer.

And I'm Rosie Bloor.

Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the event shaping your world.

Our core we provide a fresh perspective on the event shaping your world. Our correspondence sat down yesterday with one of NATO's supreme Allied commanders,

a man with nuanced views on how Europe must steal itself for the future

and with a surprising take on how America fits in.

And smoking, boozing, fast food, yeah, yeah, we all know they're bad for our health.

But here's a thing. A new study suggests that one of the most important predictors of an early death is loneliness.

First up, though. Marco Rubio, America's Secretary of State, emerged from eight hours of negotiations in Saudi Arabia yesterday, with at least a plausible step towards peace in Ukraine.

Today we made an offer that the Ukrainians have accepted, which is to enter into a ceasefire

and into immediate negotiations to end this conflict in a way that's enduring and sustainable.

Ukrainian officials agreed to a reciprocal 30-day ceasefire in exchange for the resumption of American military and intelligence help.

But just as America's talks with Russia last month on the matter didn't include Ukraine,

these talks with Ukraine didn't involve Russia, which must now agree to the terms.

The ball, as Mr. Rubio put it, is now in Russia's court.

And as uncertain as it all still is, even this step was an outcome that had

been by no means assured. So going into Tuesday, there were two absolutely different viewpoints.

Oliver Carroll is our Ukraine correspondent. One was pretty hopeful that perhaps the Americans would

renew intelligence and military assistance.

The other one, which was the dominant one, was that we had essentially a train crash about to happen.

...