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Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics podcast.

I'm Katie Balls and joined by James LaSots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Katie Balls and I'm joined by James Lysive and the Spectator's Russia correspondent, Owen Matthews.

So this morning, we woke to the news that Putin has decided against many people's predictions

to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

What are the details we know so far, James?

So, Blimeon and Putin gave a televised

address in Russia this morning and Russian forces have poured over the border. This is not a,

this is not an attack limited to trying to secure the territory claimed by the two breakaway

republics that Russia unilaterally recognized earlier this week. This is an attack on the whole of Ukraine.

As we are recording this podcast, there's reports that in an airport near the capital Kiev has been

seized by Russian forces and there have been kind of explosions heard across Ukraine. Vladimir Putin

in his speech essentially said that he wants to demilitarize Ukraine, which implies almost kind of liquidating

the military forces of Ukraine. And he also said that essentially if anyone tries to get in Russia's

way, they will respond with kind of maximum force, which has been taken, I think, as an implication that Russia

is prepared to escalate all the way up to nuclear weaponry if it finds, you know, NATO or other

alliances trying to block it from doing what it is doing. Now, Boris Johnson in a statement

addressed in the nation, has labelled Putin as a dictator.

And what do you think Putin's perspective on this is?

Do you think that there will be a surprise in the Kremlin today?

There's definitely surprise in every other level of the Russian government below the Kremlin.

...