This is Paul Adamson and welcome to In Conversation, the regular podcast of my online magazine InCompass.

I chat informally with personalities from a wide variety of backgrounds on a wide variety of subjects.

If you like this podcast, you can go to the magazine's website, Encompass-Europe

dot com or any of the main platforms for free access to all the podcast to date. I hope you

enjoy this conversation. My guest is Timothy Gartanash.

Timothy is Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford,

an author of many books and the most recently,

which is the magic lantern,

looking back at what's happened in Eastern Europe since the Velvet Revolution all those years ago.

We're going to talk about many things, Timothy, but let's avoid the trap of trying to cover the whole universe in 25 minutes.

But given its topagality, I really want to ask you about the most recent trip of Joseph Borel,

the High Representative of Foreign Security Policy, to Russia, on behalf of the European Union. The critics, of course, the media commentary has been rather brutal.

Do you think that brutality is justified?

I'm afraid it is.

The test of whether we have a European foreign policy is do we have a Russian policy?

The idea was, quite rightly, to show that we have a twin-track policy,

tough and clear on human rights, treatment of Alexander Navalny,

but at the same time seeking constructive relations.

In effect, Jose Porel was humiliated at the press conference and actually at that moment,

it really needs someone with the political instinct to see I have to react on the spot.

And it would have made a huge difference that the media story would have been a very different story if he had done so.

But the bigger problem is not Joseph Borrell, it's Nord Stream 2.

...