need decision makers who have a credibility to. walk you through moves and i m in a coalition i support manfred vega but not all of my partners do all the same the principle of the lead candidate is important to c.b.c. as michael says the social democrats in the european parliament want to see their own hopeful fronts to months take the news top job but they also support the lead candidate process and they are glad to have merkel on board at least on that that was the message from the social democrats group leader when he spoke with brussels bureau chief. assume the running process for. remember 5 years ago i know pre-shared. for what it s all democracy and still pinion that is widespread in the european parliament but even if she supports much that vevo so the other spits in county da not your spits a county that is going to enough of us this front simmons is going to become the
escalation. and that s the concern the chinese and the russians are both expressing. and they re calling for dialogue and diplomacy to try to bring an end to this escalating crisis. so in terms of what was on the long-term agenda for this meeting, they re talking about deepening ties, right? that s based on trade deals. yeah, absolutely. i mean, there has been a long running process, which has been accelerating since 2014 really when the west imposed sanctions on russia for its actions in crimea and eastern ukraine. a long running process of closening relations between russia and china. they have signed hundreds of billions of dollars worth of trade deals, particularly on the energy sector. on this occasion they re going to be signing $10 billion worth of trade deals as well. this is an increasingly close commercial relationship. it s also increasingly close military and diplomatic issue as