Hello and I'm delighted to the Spike podcast.

I'm Fraser Meyers and with me this week we have Spike's editor Tom Slater.

Hello.

And I'm delighted to welcome Mail Plus columnist Charlie Peters.

Coming up on the show, The Crisis in Ukraine, the never-ending Partygate scandal, trigger warnings on

1984 and the cancellation of Kate Clanchi.

So tensions have been rising in Ukraine this week. We've been hearing day and day out

that Russia is preparing for an invasion. At the time of recording nothing that

significant has happened, but certainly there has been a clear kind of escalation

Definitely on this side Tom what have you made of this week? I found the saber rattling from Britain and various different Western powers, although there is a split amongst the Western powers that we might get into a little bit.

Just incredibly dangerous and at times a little bit absurd as well, to be honest with you.

I mean over the weekend we had those

revelations presented by the Foreign Office of this plot to kind of install a

pro-Kremlin government in Kiev and all the rest of it which completely unraveled on contact with reality.

You had kind of former Ukrainian officials point out that this was ridiculous, not at least because

five of these people were based in Russia.

You know they were saying if you wanted to impose this government

you'd have to do it by force which of course Russia doesn't want to do and I think that was an

interesting case of first of all just how much certainly Britain but other countries

well have invested in the idea that this is imminent

that Russia is this expansionist almost imperial power that needs to be faced off.

But then on the other side, whilst you do definitely have a rising of tensions and all the rest of it. If you look at even just the kind of English,

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