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Hello, it's 224 days since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, and so many of you have

emailed and WhatsApped in the last few days, and thank you so much for doing so, because

your messages and feedback are absolutely essential to this podcast, as I hope you

know by now.

We have received many questions and comments in relation to the nuclear threats that President

Vladimir Putin has been issuing.

Like this one from Ruth, who says, the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki made the whole

world afraid of the atomic bomb, even those who might launch one.

Today that fear has mostly passed out of living memory, and with it we may have lost a crucial

safeguard.

In recent weeks there have been multiple almost casual mentions of nuclear war, and this

in itself is terrifying, and I think we should take Putin's threats very seriously.

And then Ruth goes on to add, as a child I was taken by my parents, to CND rallies that

stands for Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in London, and as a young age I was conscious

and terrified that the world could be exploded by a madman.

In 1961 my London-born mother wrote to Nikita Krzysztof at the Kremlin, to thank him from

stepping back from the brink and saving the world from probable nuclear war.

My mother received a Kremlin embossed handwritten letter back, thanking her for her kind words.

And then we've got this listener wondering how President Putin's nuclear threats connect

to the illegal annexations of those four regions of Ukraine.

Hi there, it's Dan from Moritzhire, England.

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