Hello and welcome to not another one, the podcast with me, Steve Richards, Ian Martin, who is also down the line somewhere in Newcastle, and Miranda Green, who is in the studio alone.

Tim is still suffering from a bad voice, so we can't speak, which is a rare thing for Tim.

So Miranda, you're there still alone in the studio.

I am. I am. I am.

I am. Very noble of you to head up in there. I'm Norman

nomates in my little cube, cubicle here. You've got the great Soho radio team though.

I have. And I know that with the two of you alongside me, it's an Entente Amical, is it not?

Exactly. So what we're going to explore today, if it's okay with all of you, is the, well, we're

going to begin with what appears at least like an incredible U-turn from Trump in relation to his

handling of Putin and Ukraine, and then widen it and explore a bit more about

what he's up to.

Just think back.

First of all, during the election to be president, he said he would sort Ukraine out in a day.

He began by wooing very overtly, Putin, and as part of the wooing show he could be pretty

tough, very tough on Zelensky in public, the humiliation in the White House. That didn't work.

He claims he did it in an interview with the BBC the other day to have got close four times

to a deal of some

sort unspecified. But it clearly didn't work. So now he is trying something very different,

threatening tariffs, which would be economically damaging, including tariffs on Russia's main export countries,

and arranging a greater military intervention via NATO,

not necessarily paid for by the United States,

but nonetheless a return to the military option from the United States which appeared to have gone.

...