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Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud, where each week a few of our favourite writers read out their articles in the issue.

This episode will be joined by Omer Matthews, who reads his cover piece about how Russia plans to unleash chaos.

And we'll be joined by Lionel Shriver, who picks out on the interesting

similarities between the open letter and the ransom note. And at the very end, Peter Hitchens,

who talks about why he'll be putting his foot down on wearing a mask during blood donation.

First up, Owen Matthews. There's only one person who will be genuinely pleased with the Intelligence and Security Committee's Russia report finally revealed on Tuesday, and that's Vladimir Putin.

Russia emerges as an amorphous and formidable enemy, all the more so because the inconclusive and much redacted report contains next to no substantiated

allegations.

Instead, Russia appears as a phantom unknowable menace, and this will spawn a thousand conspiracy theories,

far more corrosive and confusing to our politics than any Moscow-generated Twitter storm or document leak.

There's no smoking gun on Brexit, yet the government-induced delay in publication allows anyone

that way inclined to imagine a cover-up. Even the insistence that the state should do more to prevent

Russian meddling plays into Putin's hands.

The fear of Russian interference in British elections creates chaos and division,

and this, rather than any particular result, is Putin's real goal.

Russia may be reeling from a collapse in oil prices on one of the highest rates of COVID-19 infection in the world,

but Moscow relies on pushing the idea that it's the West that is really in trouble,

racked with violent culture wars and suffering from a profound loss of faith in its own values.

The Kremlin's new party line is, we may have it bad, but their crisis is much worse.

And where Putin's propagandists lead, its trolls and hackers follow.

...