to a ukraine them will be joint i d w correspondent nick connelly in care. welcome nick what sort of progress have the conflicting parties made. good evening phil we were expecting some kind of big bang off to a few days which have seen a flurry of diplomatic activity we were called in at last minute by the president's press people the president lenski someone who doesn't talk to the press very often and we were expecting some kind of quantum leap maybe some big concessional part of ukraine to russia. to maybe move things forward and in the end what we got was maybe not a damp squid squit but it wasn't something that really caused in the changes this problem he talked about withdrawing troops from both sides creating a bigger buffer zone between troops in 2 parts on the front line he also talked about future. future exchange of prisoners he was a troop talked about meeting with president putin and western powers in the normandy format something that hasn't happened at that level for 3 years but in terms of the big kind of headline stuff there wasn't any kind

all right for more on this i'm joined now by our correspondent nick connelly he is in kenya good evening to you nick this is just one tell along a very very long 400 kilometer front line is this withdrawal is i mean is it really that big of a deal. good evening. from abroad this might look like small fry but this is something that has proven incredibly difficult to achieve even on a small scale the past 5 years of this conflict time and time again after a few days the shooting got back underway even if the front lines have stayed moved and this is also a huge deal within ukraine they've been huge demonstrations here in kiev people calling for a no cap situation people here in the streets of kiev really taking their protest to present administration here in the heart of kiev present lecky also going to that town of the recently trying to convince soldiers and also volunteers there that this is the right thing to do my colleagues within the last few weeks speaking to people on the ground and heard very diametrically opposed opinions on the ground about what people think about this move. lo

who is now at the eye of a growing american political storm i want to put in our correspondent nick connelly he is on the story for us in kiev while these are some interesting times aren't they nick it looks like president zelinsky i mean he apparently got called saying some not so nice things about other leaders here in europe i'm talking about the german chancellor in that phone conversation that he had with u.s. president trump let's just kind of look at the part of that transcript trump said to him when i was speaking to uncle americal she talks ukraine but she doesn't do anything and the lenski responded you know donald your time some of the of our rights not just a 100 percent but a 1000 percent right now and when you look at that is there going to hurt zelinsky in his plans moving forward with germany and with the european union of those words going to come back to haunt him. brant i'm not sure they will i think most world leaders have things to be queasy about if they have private bilateral calls were published like this interestingly enough i think in this case this transcript came

agenda that is definitely unwelcome and something that is not going away in a hurry so all right nick connelly in here with the latest on the ukrainian angle of this impeachment scandal nic thank you. and here with me at the big table tonight is a man who knows washington d.c. and how u.s. policy reverberates here in berlin and europe jack james is a senior fellow at the german marshall fund is also a member of the council on foreign relations jack it's good to have you back on the show you just a few days ago from washington you know policymakers you know well makers here in berlin. what are they asking or what are they saying about this impeachment inquiry in washington that is going to happen and i think it's going to happen even by the end of this year if not before. and largely because of what mr trump said today or yesterday asking china now to get involved in this investigation i think he's got a problem understanding what his office is when he speaks and there's a larger problem here and that is. governance the relationship between the executive branch of the legislative branch and the