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Hello and welcome to the Spectator's Coffee House Shots podcast. I'm Kate Andrews and I'm joined by our editor, Fraser Nelson, and our deputy editor, Freddie Gray.

So Fraser, things continue to escalate in Ukraine.

Putin seems to be getting even more aggressive. The Ukrainians continue to hold the

capital Kiev, but the attacks are getting more severe. What's the latest? Well, Putin's just

given a bizarre interview where he's saying he's got nothing but goodwill towards his neighbors. It's

difficult to reconcile that with the column of tanks still creeping the way towards Kiev.

Interesting though that Putin still seems to be shy about telling the Russians exactly what's

going on. And it seems even he fears caustic public opinion over there.

We're a little week into this invasion now and it's quite clear that Ukraine hasn't fallen nearly as fast as people expected.

There's no comparison with the way the Russians took Crimea versus Ukraine.

We've had some pretty warding developments, Russia's shelling of a nuclear power plant, for example.

But by and large, it's still not clear what the weekend's going to bring.

We've seen a flurry of diplomatic activity. And now, I mean, at one stage, only Britain was

sending arms to Ukraine. Now, I think, 20 countries are doing so. So there's this really quite

striking United Front, not just amongst the West, but amongst Korea, Japan, Singapore.

So that is dramatic.

The events in Ukraine are horrific, certainly as you watch them on TV, and Freddy's come back from the front,

so he'll know a bit more about it.

But it's still very difficult to tell what's going to happen in the next

few days and a couple of weeks. We've been waiting for Kiev to fall for some time now,

...