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Hi, and welcome back to Foreign Office. I'm Michael Weiss, Director of Special Investigations at the Free Russia Foundation as well as the Senior Correspondent at Yahoo News.

This week we are joined by the esteemed Sir Lawrence Friedman. He is the Emeritus Professor of War Studies at Kings College London, as well as the author of a new book, Command the Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine.

He is known as the Dean of Strategic Studies, certainly in the UK, probably worldwide, and it must read analysts and essayists on all things military, but particularly I've been following his work religiously since the war in Ukraine began in February of 2022.

I invited Sir Lawrence on this week because he wrote a very good overview, I thought, of the debate among other things, the wisdom or lack thereof in defending Bakmut, which has seen some degree of stabilization in recent days, suggesting perhaps the Ukrainians were correct in their decision, but Sir Lawrence is great to have you on among all the topics I want to pick your brain about included in your most recent essay, Still Bakmut, which you can find on Sir Lawrence's sub-stack.

I will tweet it out when this episode drops. Tell us a little bit about your impression of the Putin Xi Summit. This seemed to be kind of an anticlimactic moment that the Russians clearly were hoping the Chinese would go all in as it were in this war of conquest in Ukraine, sending heavy armaments and material, and it doesn't seem to have worked to Moscow's design. What's your overview of that event?

Well, I think that's right. How much the Russians really expected the Chinese would send very visible high-quality kitter, I'm not sure, because that would raise all sorts of issues for Xi in relations with the West, that while he may not particularly feel relations with the West generally are going very well at the moment, doesn't mean to say he wants to make them worse, especially in the Europeans.

I know we take a while before what they have could be incorporated on the Russian side, but I think even without that it was a pretty disappointing occasion for Russia, the pipeline deal that they helped to complete wasn't.

I think he read the joint statement at the end, and the thing that struck me most was just how low energy it was from the Russian side. It was basically agreeing to lots of slightly absurd Chinese proposals on the future of civilization and the like.

And also rather, namely agreeing to their piece proposal, which in the fact of the matter is how the cynical we may view it is if the principles embodied were applied, then Russia would have to withdraw.

I think Xi necessarily is going to take it that far or expect it, but you didn't get the feeling at all that Putin was in a robust mood. It struck me as being, as you said, right to stop very anticlimactic.

China remains the most important strategic ally or partner for Russia at the moment. They seem to have been isolated everywhere in Europe.

There had been chatter prior to the summit that the Chinese and the Indians in particular were crucial in convincing Putin of the catastrophic folly of using any kind of WMD on the battlefield in Ukraine, which seems to have the threat of that seems to have diminished somewhat.

Although I also wanted to to acquire with you about this proposal or threat really to state station nuclear missiles and Belarus.

Is it more just kind of empty saber rattling or is it something that the West ought to be worried about?

Well, there are a lot of points that start on the orgs actually said about nuclear.

They repeated the statement that was first made famous by Reagan and Gorbachev, but the nuclear war essentially mustn't be fought.

And China has taken a pretty consistent line on that.

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