Welcome to the Eurointelligence podcast.

I'm Wolfgang Munchau, and with me are Susanna Monshank and Jack Smith.

Today we want to talk about the French elections, as we often talk about these days,

and in particular the phenomenon of Eric Zemur, who in the first poll has now come ahead of his other right-wing rivals, Valerie Pecress

and Marine Le Pen.

But we would like to start talking about Russia.

This is not a story we can't really ignore.

Even though today, a Friday morning, you know, where nothing concrete is happening, we are not yet in a position

to decide or to determine what Putin's actions are.

You know, we're reading a lot of commentators who think that they're going to invade on,

you know, at 3 o'clock on Wednesday.

Joe Biden is saying the Russians are about to do this.

And a lot of that, that these warnings have their purpose to focus minds, to get people

ready, and also to tell the Russians that we are, we are ready for everything. Putin usually,

you know, doesn't, doesn't follow, follow those predictions. As he didn't last week, he was supposed

to have invaded on Wednesday when the CIA predicted he would and he didn't.

So we shouldn't really overstayed our knowledge of what he's thinking and what his motivations

are.

And I'm always skeptical of commentators who think, you know, who have kind of mapped it all out.

What it sort of seems to be happening is a, you know, he seems to have not withdrawn his troop,

that we know, that he has actually increased his troop presence at the Ukrainian border.

So this was a mirage.

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