Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take from Los Angeles of all places, but I want to talk about the latest, with the war in Ukraine.

We have seen a little bit more fighting over the last week, the Ukrainians facing more bombing against its civilians and unfortunately significant numbers dead, including children. And the Ukrainians with a drone attack against an energy and oil depot in Crimea with some pretty big explosions and damage to infrastructure presently held illegally by the Russians. In between all that, the big news of the week was Xi Jinping, President of China, finally belatedly, but importantly reaching out directly to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. They spoke for an hour. It was, and be sure this was planned on the anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, and coming out of it, the Chinese telling Zelenskyy that they would very much support doing a lot to directly provide economic support for reconstruction, but in return, they want to see a ceasefire: in other words, ending this war as soon as possible.