Hello and welcome to the Spectator podcast. I'm Lara Prendergast. On this week's episode, we'll be discussing Vladimir Putin's information wars, grammar schools in Kent, and whether we're all getting excited about Halloween a little too early. This week saw the controversial move by Nat West to freeze the bank accounts of the broadcaster Russia today. The decision has subsequently been reversed, but the question remains, was there a political

aspect to it? And should Britain be involving itself in Russia's propaganda war? This is the subject

that Paul Wood and Rod Liddle tackle in this week's cover piece, and I'm joined now to discuss this

issue by former BBC and Voice of Russia journalist Dmitri Linnik and from Washington, D.C., Ben Judah.

So, Dimitri, can you summarize what's happened this week between Nat West and Russia today?

I don't think anybody can, but from what I know, the situation is slightly confusing and probably confused in that, okay, the first thing we hear about this is that RT comes up with

this quote from the RBS or NatWest statement saying that your accounts have been closed.

That's a final decision. No further recourse.

The next thing, of course RBS and Nat West are 70% British government owned, the Russian ministry, foreign ministry, Moscow says, oh, the British government must have had a finger in the pie.

The British government comes out, says, we have nothing to do with it. The next thing is RBS or NatWest comes up with a statement,

we're looking in the situation, we're not sure where it's going, and we're hopefully going to

sort it out. So there's a lot of confusion on all sides, and that's where we're at.

And then, do you detect a political hand behind this?

There has been over the last few years a strengthening of banks,

know your clients' procedures and anti-corruption and anti-money laundering procedures.

And if a major blue-chip bank gets this wrong,

they have a very large fines to pay pay and it can be an extremely kind of

time wasting situation for them to be in and they can lose money out of this. And one possibility

which we shouldn't discount is that within RBS there has been a decision to review

clients coming from highly corrupt countries like the Russian

Federation. And, Dimitri, in Paul's piece this week, you suggest that the Baltic states

becoming increasingly worried about a Russian invasion. Do you think there's any evidence to suggest

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