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Hello, I'm BBC presenter, Adam Fleming, and this is the interview from the BBC World Service.

The best conversations coming out of the BBC, people shaping our world from all over the world.

If you're not a little bit afraid, then you're not paying attention.

We have never seen a people so united.

Do not make that boat crossing. Do not make that journey.

Being born in America, feeling American, having people treat me like I'm not.

We're more popular than populism.

For this interview, I speak to the UK Defence Secretary John Healy about the threat posed by Russia

after he revealed that Russian submarines have been carrying out covert operations over the UK's

deep sea cables and pipelines, infrastructure that is critical to energy supplies and the

vast majority of the UK's internet traffic. He says the activity could form part of a wider

Russian strategy to map these systems in peacetime and potentially sabotage or destroy them in times

of conflict. While global attention is focused on the

Middle East, he says Britain cannot afford to be distracted from what he calls its primary threat

and that NATO must stay alert to Russian activity. Despite the all eyes on the Middle East,

understandably, and this noisy, dangerous conflict that we've got out there,

there are other threats that our nation faces and that our forces are alert to those, tracking those,

and dealing with those 24-7. And it's also a way of reminding people that we're rightly concerned

about the Middle East.

We want to see a ceasefire there.

We want to see the stability returned and the lifeblood of shipping restored through the Strait of Hormuz.

...