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00:00Maria the US saying there is still a diplomatic route if there is one. What is it. Well you know it's it's very unclear and I wish I had the answer for that question. But of course we know that there's a meeting between Anthony Blinken and Sergei Lavrov that will happen in about two hours. The idea here that keeps being repeated by the US administration is that Russia has to de-escalate. And then there will be a diplomatic path forward. It is interesting however that overnight we had a number of documents from the US government saying you will want to make it very clear here in the situation Russia is the aggressor. Ukraine is just trying to survive. And they also say Russia has been engaging in major disinformation over the past few weeks when it comes to Ukraine. Now of course when you look at what is happening here this is a very tricky situation. Is that a deadlock. But essentially what you have right now is Russia saying we want something on paper that tells us and guarantees that Ukraine will never join need to. We know that the West is not going to concede on that. And of course when you look at the demands that are being put forward by Western allies they want to see those troops being pulled back. The problem for Vladimir Putin of course is that that would look like a defeat. So the way forward here looks very unclear. And I have to say speaking to some of the Russian press here Francine it's always interesting to see their perspective and they say they're not expecting a lot out of this. Yeah. And Maria I just you know I wonder whether the real question is was whether the West just bungled it up because Putin does not feel threatened by NATO and it does not feel threatened by the West. Yeah and that could be one of the issues here that at this point he believes that the United States is not going to go to war over Ukraine. The Europeans are not ready to do that. They have an energy crisis that is happening at this point. The Nordstrom pipeline is still very much way and into all of this. And of course we know that European security is still very early days when it comes to need to. You know you could also argue they're not going to go into a major war when it comes to Russia. The battle here is being played on the economic front. And that is essentially the question that Vladimir Putin will have to answer. Is he willing to take the economic pain of sanctions to get a political win or not.

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Blinken & Lavrov to Meet Over Ukraine in Geneva

Efforts to avert a military conflict in Ukraine continue with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken set to meet his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Geneva. Bloomberg’s Maria Tadeo reports on “Bloomberg Markets: European Open.” (Source: Bloomberg)

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