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00:00Tony. Putin waited until pretty late to name his delegation. What do we know about them? What does it tell us? What was he ever planning really on showing up? The Kremlin basically kept us guessing all day during Wednesday to see who Putin would eventually name and whether he himself would go, as he said. And there was no announcement of Putin coming to Istanbul for the talks, which was a condition that basically Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had set out as a reason why he would go to the talks. Instead, he sent a group led by Vladimir Medinsky, who was, in fact, in charge of the previous time. Russia and Ukraine officials got together in Istanbul way back in early 2022. Russia claimed at that point that they had some sort of a deal, that Ukraine had signed up to Ukraine, so that that wasn't the case. Those talks broke down. And essentially, Putin is saying he wants to resume the talks at that point where they broke off by sending not only Medinsky is the leader, but also a deputy foreign minister who was part of that group. And there's a deputy defense minister also going along today. So, as you say, pretty low level people not really empowered to make decisions. And that's going to be a disappointment, I think, for Ukraine and potentially also for the US and should put some store on these talks. And Tony, of course, you are on the ground for us in Turkey, where foreign ministers, NATO's foreign ministers will be meeting today. What will be the focus of those discussions? Yes, they're gathering here in the resort of Antalya. They've got an informal summit where they're discussing, among other things, sharp increases in defense spending by NATO member states. So there's a plan on the table to increase overall spending to something like 5% of GDP that will be broken down to something like 3.5% on actual defense spending and then another 1.5% on things that are defense related. As we said, no member, no NATO member is currently at the 5% and very many of them aren't anywhere near the 3.5%. So it's going to be quite challenging for a lot of member states to reach that level of spending.

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Russia-Ukraine Talks in Turkey: What to Expect

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