Times Radio: Ukraine and Russian peace talks in Geneva

If you look at the negotiating team that the Russians have put forward this time, and they've slightly rotated some of their personnel - which is I suppose a little bit revealing - they've chosen Vladimir Medinsky to lead the delegation. He's a presidential aide, he is a historian, he was very well known for being quite hard lined on Ukraine, he has got very specific views about Russian territorial claims to Ukraine, and he's been part of those negotiations before. But it sort of suggests that some of the topics on the table are different to what they were talking about back in Abu Dhabi a few weeks ago, but it doesn't suggest that it's more forward-looking. They've chosen someone that's rather regressive, and what Medinsky is going to be really pushing forward, and I'm sure he did over the last few days, is talking about these so-called root causes of the conflict, and that's a kind of point that Putin has been talking about excessively over the past four years. To delve into the history and Russian territorial claims, and really to try to get to what Russia sees as the root of the conflict, rather than moving forward, trying to come up with negotiations, trying to come up any kind of compromise on either side. So it doesn't really suggest that the Russians are putting forward a team that's interested in progress."