I'm Arthur Snell, a major war is taking place on the European continent with Russia's

invasion of Ukraine. Bringing you a series of special episodes to help you understand

the crisis as it unfolds. This is Doomsday Watch.

Welcome back to Doomsday Watch. We hope you're finding these war bulletins valuable. A quick

reminder that you can support our work on the crowdfunding app Patreon from as little

as £3 per month. Just search Patreon Doomsday Watch or follow the link in the show notes.

I'm delighted to be joined today by Dr Samir Puri, who's a senior fellow at the International

Institute of Strategic Studies based in Singapore. Perhaps more importantly for this discussion,

he's also a veteran of observation of the ceasefire in the eastern Donbass region of Ukraine,

a job that he did back in 2014 and 2015, and his book, Russia's Road to War, is published

on the 25th of August, six months after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Samir, welcome.

Thanks very much for having me, Arthur. Great to be here. Samir, it's so interesting

your background there. Tell us about how you found yourself being an observer of a not very

well-observed ceasefire. This is after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2014, the first invasion.

How did that come about? Well, it really wasn't obscure job. So obscure that back in 2014-15,

after the year I spent in Donbass, most people I told about it had no idea whether Donbass was when

I got back to the UK. Some of them didn't even know that there was still a war going on in

Ukraine. So imagine how far we've come. Now, Ukraine is something that you can't sort of think

beyond. But how did I get there? Well, a decade before that, I did after graduating from

a few universities. I ended up by chance being an election observer in Ukraine during what

became the orange revolution in 2004, which basically meant driving around polling stations and

sort of spotting the cheating that was going on as Russia's favorite candidate was trying to

...