The Economist.

Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist.

I'm your host, Rosie Bloor.

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

Thank you. we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. After Franco died 50 years ago, Spain made a remarkably swift and mostly painless transition

to democracy. Our correspondent asks how far the countries come and where it might yet be

going.

And dating your boss has got to be a terrible idea.

But an awful lot of people do it.

So what does it do to the size of your package?

And yes, obviously I am talking about wages here.

First up, though. Pentagon officials are in Kiev today to discuss a new peace proposal. It was drawn up by America and Russia and includes many measures Ukraine has already rejected. These meetings come at a

particularly tricky time for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. His government is currently embroiled in a giant corruption scandal,

the biggest crisis since Russian tanks arrived in early 2022.

Battles within government, battles on the front line,

and now a plan that Ukraine had nothing to do with.

The so-called peace deal is a pretty shocking punts of a plan to end the war.

Oliver Carroll is our Ukraine correspondent.

And it's clear that it's blindsided swathes of the US government.

Ukraine, for sure, had no role in its drafting.

The driving forces appear to be Donald Trump's special representative Steve Whitkoff and Putin's envoy Kirill Demetriev.

Much less clear is what Mr Trump himself makes of it, but taken at face value, it's little

...