Welcome to today's discussion.

My name is Glenn Dyson and with me here is Alexander Mercuris from the Duran.

And we're joined by former senior British diplomat Alastair Crook.

It was also an excellent or expert on the Middle East. So welcome.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

So today we really want to discuss both the conflicts we have with Russia, between Russia, Ukraine,

but also the Palestine-Israel conflict. I guess what they both have in common is they both have severely weakened.

We're standing in the world and one can almost feel the shifts of a world order

under Western leadership declining.

So you yourself recently came back from a trip to go.

And I just thought I would start off by asking your oppressions there for the mood.

How bad our relations? Are there at the Cold War level, worse?

Do you see any path towards at least learning to speak to each other again? Certainly. I mean, I was actually, it was last week, and I was quite shocked because I spoke with a person who was,

I mean, this is, who is very responsible for this sphere, the relationship between Russia and the West.

And what was clear from this is just how bad they are.

They are much worse than during the Cold War era.

I remember the Cold War era, sometimes I remember the Deputy Defense Minister telling me that

there were almost no channels open left.

There was just the one military channel with a Pentagon, a video thing, but for resolving basically technical issues about military to prevent a sort of clash or some sort of problems between aircraft and things like that.

But what he, how he described it was that, you know, this sort of sense of enmity, you know, was

really striking. It wasn't that Russia was seen any longer as just, you know, a competitor,

a rival, a sort of unpleasant intrusion into the geopolitical order, is saying that, you know,

...