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entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. Hello and welcome to the Friday episode of the Battleground podcast with me Saul David and Roger

Morehouse. Patrick, as you might know, is taking a well-earned rest in Ireland, so Roger is filling in

for the second time this week.

The big news is that Ukraine's intelligence service has foiled a Russian-led a plot to assassinate

President Zelensky by arresting two colonels in the President's security team. They are said to have

been recruited by the Russian Security Service, the FSB, more than two years ago prior to the full-scale invasion

of Ukraine and were about to carry out their mission to kidnap and then kill Zelensky.

Yeah, the plot, interestingly, Saul, was supposed to coincide with Vladimir Putin's inauguration

on Tuesday as President of Russia for the fifth time. It was a typically gaudy affair in the Grand

Kremlin Palace, with Putin walking down a long corridor to the hall where 2,500 guests

were waiting to witness his signing in ceremony, and they included top criminal and officials

and foreign dignitaries from sympathetic countries like Iran and China. The only NATO ambassador

to attend, oddly, was that from France.

And this is yet another mixed signal from French President Emmanuel Macron, who said most recently

that sooner or later NATO will have boots on the ground on Ukraine. So quite what his ambassador

is doing there in the Kremlin is another question. He did seem to row back from that

on Monday during his summit meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping when he said that France was not

...