Time to study Russian, again, writes Jonathan Newton of Tales from the European Underbelly: “I would have had much use for such skills today, as I seem to be surrounded by Russian-speaking colleagues at the EU Council’s Press Centre, where the EU’s foreign ministers and assorted colleagues will wriggle around the question what to do with the EU-Russian summit on Friday when the two are so at odds with eachother that they aren’t even pretending that there will be any outcome of that meeting; and when plenty of EU member states want the meeting called off altogether.”