Welcome aboard this Air France podcast message. Air France and its crew invite you to discover

its business class cabin, where you can enjoy a full flatbed. For even more comfort, an

ultra soft duvet and pillow are at your disposal. Air France wishes you a pleasant podcast.

Air France is a journey. Air France. Book your business class tickets now at AirFrance.co.uk.

When Vladimir Putin announced he was annexing parts of Ukraine last week, he did not skimp

on the showmanship. He emerged on a stage after walking through gigantic golden doors, pulled

open by a pair of goose-stepping soldiers. A packed house was there to hear him speak.

Vladimir Putin no doubt likes the trappings of lack of a better term, dictatorship. I asked

Politico's Brian Bender to sit down and talk about the speech with me. He is the sole

power in Russia and he likes everybody to know that and so when he does public events,

they're usually big and outsized and everything that would go with the sort of culture personality.

There was this one moment I wondered if Brian had noticed. It was when Putin claimed he

was scooping up parts of Ukraine because it was the will of millions of people. This is

a species claim at best, but it didn't matter. It was as if one of those old-time applause

signs had gone off. And the studio audience, they knew just what to do.

This is not unlike any one who tries to avoid historical analogies because they're never perfect.

But a bunch of people last week were raising Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Adolf Hitler did very

similar things in Poland and Czechoslovakia where he annexed German-speaking portions of those

countries that bordered on Germany. And of course, a lot of it is staged. And when you say

millions support this, it's really hard to know how true that really is. And who believes it?

And who believes it? Russia has a very accomplished, sophisticated propaganda machine.

In this speech, Putin raised a kind of specter. He started talking about how the United States

...