genie: douglas herbert, thank you for that. let's go to the united states where hillary clinton and bernie firsts face-off in the televised democratic presidential debate. the former first lady and secretary of state has seen her position challenged by the senator. he has excited the left-wing with his self identifying brand of democratic socialism. analysts are saying clinton came on top with sanders time, and as kate moody reports, they were not the only ones on stage. : gambling their political futures on a stage in las vegas, democratic party fors have the the first debate. hillary clinton and bernie sanders dominated the evening. the latter describes himself as democratic socialist. mrs. clinton: i am a progressive, but i'm a progressive who likes to get things done, and i know how to find common ground, and i know how to stand my ground, and i prove that in every vision i have had. mr. sanders: what we are against is what the top 1% in this country, they own as much wealth as the bottom 90%. issues likelash on gun control

we go to douglas herbert, who is covering events for us now. doug, we have the russian president, vladimir putin, meeting currently with francois hollande, the french president, at the present palace behind you. what are the leaders talking about? ukraine are serious? doug: that is the question we all want to know. they are supposed to be talking about ukraine. the reason this summit was convened is because it was y iv.d the normand these four leaders have not really sat down since then. they were all night talks, they dragged on into the wee hours of the morning. they hammered out a multipoint deal on how to bring the ukrainian conflict resolution. that is what they are supposed to be talking about. vladimir putin and francois hollande, their talks have been underway behind me in the french presidential palace. a lot of speculation, and it is just that speculation because i am not a fly, i am not on that wall. frances hollande, launched its own airstrikes on syria in recent days. he and french officials are perhaps a little bit alarmed as what

for more, we bring in international affairs editor douglas herbert. skies,eing waged in the on land, and from the sea. tell us how the battlefield has changed. doug: it has completely changed, almost 180 degrees. you had vladimir putin calling for a broad international rally against the islamic state group. for a lot of people, that's what this was going to be about. the reality on the ground, according to the opposition, the vast majority of the airstrikes we have seen -- these are now syrian and russian planes. they have been hitting targets other than the islamic state group. 0hey say that 90%, not 19%, 9- have hit areas where the islamic state group is not based at all. so, what are they kidding? they are getting the area around -- what are they hitting? the area kiddihitting around it the province -- around idlib province. this is cover for a ground assault by the syrian army. they are trying to recover ground that has been lost by bishara sought -- by bashar forces over the past out a domain,ve assad's forcesar to recover those areas. they will

joining me to discuss this is douglas herbert. we are seeing for the first time since the conflict began in 2011, all major parties involved either on the side or directly involved in negotiations. douglas: the first major international effort to resolve this is elusive, grinding war that has defied resolution. we have been here before. not exactly in this form. the reason that these talks are the talk of the town is because iran is there. back in geneva one way 2012? that was the first international attempt to bring this to a resolution, and it called for those original talks, a political transition. the hitch was that it called for a national unity government in syria, which was not going to happen because the two sides in the conflict are too far apart. we are back to the same situation today. it is bashar al-assad. he is not even the 9000-pound gorilla in the room, he is the 20 million pound gorilla. the talks are going to come down to differing interpretations of what role he should play in the short-term, the medium-term, an