Humiliated' Russia forced to cancel navy parade for second time | Ukraine war news updates today

I'm Francis Dernley, and this is Ukraine, the latest.Today, as Putin cancels his Navy Day parade in St. Petersburg for the second year in a row, forced to stand by an image of a submarine instead, we report on another major weekend of strikes by both Russia and Ukraine, including one by Kiev on an Iranian -linked vessel in the Caspian Sea.Then we hear from the Welt offices in Germany about their war game that caused such concern NATO Secretary -General Mark Rutter had to respond.It's Monday the 27th of July, four years and 153 days since the full -scale invasion began.And today, dialing in from Germany, I'm delighted to be joined by our Berlin correspondent James Rothwell and Welt's international security correspondent Caroline O'Droughton.But first, the major updates from the weekend and this morning.

It was an intense weekend in all three physical domains, sea, land and air.We'll get to those theatres imminently, but let's start with President Zelensky's claim over the weekend that Ukrainian intelligence understands it is Moscow's plan to carry out some sort of large -scale mobilisation over the coming months.Putin is preparing to simply send more Russians to war, Zelensky said.He disguises it with different words and signals, but that is what he's preparing to do.This matters because, as we've talked about many times, a significant mobilisation on the scale considered by many to be necessary would likely have significant destabilising effects both politically and economically.Some believed that they might be so serious Putin would rather de -escalate the war rather than risk it.

I talked about that hypothesis with Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute in Wednesday's episode last week, if you're interested in that.The core reason, of course, that mobilisation is necessary is the staggering Russian losses at the front.In the same address, Zelensky said Moscow enlisted 221 ,000 people into the Russian military so far in 2026.while sustaining nearly 225 ,500 losses, including 131 ,000 killed and almost 93 ,000 wounded.A significant share of those wounds are severe, as frontline medical care in Russia is catastrophically poor.he added.

Ukrainian intelligence claims only about 70 ,500 new Russian soldiers signed contracts in the first three months of 2026, falling short of the defence ministry's goal by about 30 ,000.Zelensky also claimed Moscow is preparing to deploy an additional 30 ,000 North Korean troops, that China is helping Russia with satellites and targeting tech to strike Ukraine more precisely and that Iran is sending Russia ballistic missiles.Now hold that thought on Iran as James is shortly going to give some significant developments from the naval theatre related to it.But first a quick note on the fact that Zelensky is in London today meeting new Prime Minister Andy Burnham at a naval base involved in the training of Ukrainian forces.He is seeking, of course, to lock in British support.

to protect Ukrainian drones.It will help them to hit their targets and help save Ukrainian lives.

Before the meeting, Zelensky said he wanted to help build a big drone factory based on new technologies in Britain.His arrival comes following some controversy around the appointment of Ed Miliband as foreign secretary.as discussed last week.But the new Chancellor in charge of the nation's finances is the former Defence Secretary John Healey.And many are reading that as an encouraging sign for military spending here.Though when pressed on whether there would be an increase, the Prime Minister was evasive.

But now to the air war.We now know much more about the ballistic missile strike Adly and Alex referenced on Friday's episode on an arms exhibition taking place in Kiev.Then it was still a breaking story.At least 10 are confirmed dead and more than 100 others injured.A presidential adviser told the Kiev Independent the event was taking place at a training ground.The president's office has now opened two criminal investigations, including into a possible violation of laws and customs of war, as well as possible negligence.

in organising and holding the event.Into Saturday, the Ukrainians hit another site belonging to Russia's Amazon, Wildberries, in Yekaterinburg and an oil refinery in Russia's Tyumen Oblast.Following the new campaign on the e -commerce giant because of its involvement in supplying drone parts, it's reported that Wildberries has stopped displaying military -related goods in response to searches that refer directly to the invasion.Probably a bit late for that.There were more strikes on the occupied territories, including a Russian early warning radar in occupied Crimea.There's also undated footage claiming to show a speeding Russian military train engulfed in flames after its fuel tanker convoy was struck in occupied Ukraine.

Separately, Kiev's general staff reported strikes on many sites across Ukraine, including an ammunition depot in occupied Kherson Oblast and an observation post in Belgorod Oblast.In Rostov -on -Don, residents reported fires and heavy smoke, with the governor saying five people were injured in what he described as a massive aerial attack.The Engels II military airfield in Saratov Oblast was also left ablaze, with eyewitnesses publishing footage of smoke and fireat the site, which is home to Russia's strategic aircraft.If that wasn't enough, the Russian city of Kirov in Kirov Oblast, 800 kilometres northeast of Moscow, was damaged in a Ukrainian Flamingo cruise missile strike that reportedly left six dead and dozens more injured.Despite the bans on posting any footage, locals did put things on Telegram, showing what is believed to be the Avatek factory burning.

On Sunday, Kiev was hit again with more ballistic missile attacks, including one that struck an 18 -storey residential building.No casualties have been reported in that.The Russian city of Belgorod was also struck later.But perhaps the most significant was that, once again, a Romanian F -16 fighter jet shot down a drone that violated Romanian airspace, marking the third such incident in three days.Bucharest has said it will summon Moscow's ambassador as a consequence.But, James, perhaps even more diplomatically significant was an attack in the Naval Theatre, which you'll tell us about in just a second.

I should say, for those who are wondering, that James is broadcasting casting Are starting to come together or at least certainly from the Ukrainian?Perspective so on Saturday the 24th of July there was a Ukrainian strike in the Caspian Sea According to Newsweek which killed a sailor aboard an Iranian commercial vessel and that prompted Iran to obviously condemn the attack But also summon Ukraine's charge d 'affaires now according to President Zelensky Ukraine was targeting some vessels carrying military cargo, which was linked to not only Iran but also Russian warship and Ukraine said it was a successful long -range strike.Now what's I think very interesting about this attack and we can talk about thisa little bit more, is you've basically got the Ukrainians attacking what appears to be Iranian military assets that may have been on their way to Russia in order to support the Russian air.war effort.And as we've talked about many times on the podcast, Francis, we know that there's very, very deep military cooperation going on between the Russians and the Iranians, most infamously, of course, via the provision of Shahad drones.

Now, we don't know exactly what was on this vessel that was attacked.We could speculate.But for the time being, we don't quite know.But Ukraine does say it was military cargo.And according to the Ukrainians, the ship was blown out of the water.One crew member was killed.

And there is a hope in Kiev that these sorts of attacks not only have a kinetic effect, of course, which is by attacking some military cargo, but also demonstrating to Vladimir Putin that that that strategic partnership between Russia and Ukraine and the Ukrainians obviously are well aware that Mr. Trump has been at war with Iran, of course, and perhaps they're hoping that this might cause him to turn against Vladimir to rather than the Caspian Sea.Ukraine's But there have also been meetings between senior US officials and Chevron executives.And there has actually been some anxiety, Francis, about the extent to which these sorts of attacks might not only have a disruption on commercial shipping, potentially, but also I think there's generally a bit of anxiety on the Trump administration side about trying to contain the war in Ukraine.We know that politically the Trump administration just has a very, very different view, of course, on Ukraine compared to the Europeans.They probably like the idea of being able to keep these two conflicts in two kind of discrete boxes But when you have a situation where Ukraine is attacking what does appear to be military kits That's being shipped by Iran over to Russia It is kind of linking the conflicts together and I think that rebuke from the Trump administration Related to that separate incident in the Black Sea It does suggest that there's a little bit of nervousness on the Trump side of the equation about this escalating Of course, it might be very much in the interest of Ukraine to escalate this if it's going to help turn The Americans further against Russia.

Well, I think that's exactly it isn't it?There's an interesting statement from President Zelensky over the weekend He said I'll instruct our intelligence to share with our partners the information we have regarding Russia's new assistance to the Iranian regime So trying to connect those two walls in a way that might be considered advantageous from key strategic Positioning with the United States at the moment.He says at the same time.There's a clear Correlation between Russia's satellite imagery of the sites that are currently being struck the US sites and Iranian strikes both before the attacks in preparation for them and afterwards to assess the damage Inflicted so no doubt there'll be some interesting developments there nowbefore I go to the ground war, James, there are just a couple of, well, some vessels that have been sunk that you just were looking into.

Francis, you're absolutely right.Now, the Golden Leo, that's an international cargo vessel, sank off the coast of Ukraine's Black Sea port of Odessa, which you, of course, know very well, on Sunday.And that comes a week after Ukrainian officials said it had been attacked by Russian forces.Now, nine crew members were killed in that attack.They were able to evacuate eight others to safety.And the ship had left the port of Chornomorsk with a cargo of corn when it was, as I said just a moment ago, shelled by Russian forces.

Now, the Russian defence ministry has spoken to this incident and they said that on Sunday their forces struck Ukrainian ports and shipping assets.The Russians are saying that this container terminal that was hit near Odessa handled quote, military cargoes.earlier today.So another pretty serious incident there involving shipping and as is often the case with these stories, some conflicting information as to whether this was military or international trade related.

Well thanks very much James, we'll come back to you in a moment.From the air and the sea to the ground next.No major change in the picture from Alex's updates at the end of last week.There was another double tap strike against emergency workers in Kharkiv Oblast reported on Friday with an ambulance hit including the driver and paramedic.It is noteworthy the increase of attacks against ambulances in particular and that's something we plan to cover in more detail in a future episode.Friend of the podcast Fabrice de Pretz of the Financial Times has written an insightful article

But there is a litany of signs, some obvious and some more subtle, that can be used to make the chronicle of this slow agony.In Krematorsk, one could start in November last year with the closure of the local train station that marked the severance of the last railway link between Ukrainian -held Donbass and the rest of Ukraine.And around the same time, the first Russian FPV drones began roaming that city.The anti -drone nets that began to be set up en masse this spring inside the city and over the roads leading in and out.I don't know when the city's firefighting trucks began to be wearing Mad Max -esque suits of armour, metal cages and skirts of thick rubber padding to protect their flanks.But they also point at a city becoming unsuitable for life.

An expression often used that makes those frontline spaces sound like distant, hostile planets.We'll link to that piece in the show notes, as I say.But James, you've been looking into some more stories from Russia for us.Where do you want to start here?

Thank you, Francis.Well, let's start with the annual Navy Day Parade in St. Petersburg, an opportunity for pomp, circumstance and martial prowess, you might say, for the Russians.Only they've cancelled it for the second year in a row.And that's because they're concerned about Ukraine's increasingly powerful deep strike capabilities.There are concerns that even very well defended major cities such as St. Petersburg might be hit during one of these parades, which of course would be incredibly humiliating for the Russians.Now Navy Day, for those not familiar with it in Russia, is a national holiday that the Russian Federation tends to observe on the last Sunday in July.

And since 2017, you know, they've been takingwhat you'd expect for a big naval parade.You know, they want to put on display their finest combat vessels and they generally want to show that the Russian Navy is a force to be reckoned with.But for the second year in a row, the main parade has been cancelled due to, quote unquote, security concerns.We can talk about that in a moment, Francis.And Vladimir Putin instead gave an address to sailors.

Now, that visit comes Coincided with some mysterious large -scale internet blackouts in st. Petersburg as well.That's according to city residents on the ground Francis, of course, I'm sure this is reminding you of what it's reminding me of which is the story about the permits that Vladimir Zelensky was offering to give for that other major Military parade, of course that's held in Moscow every year.

This is very embarrassing I think for the Russians that they're having to take these steps Oh, absolutely And I think the footage that's been released at the same time as of Putin having to stand by some naval officers and a picture of a submarine, rather than, of course, being in one of these docks, tells its own story, really.It's not a great look.And another not great look for the Russians is what took place in Kazakhstan over the weekend.Now, I think it's fair to say this is something of a diplomatic faux pas, really.But what did you make of it, James?Where do you want to start on this?

Yes, that's right.So what's happened essentially is that the Kazakh President Kasim Jomar Tokayev has urged Putin to freeze the war and he would like peace talks to resume under the Istanbul framework and he made those comments during a meeting in Omsk.Now, the Kazakh president basically argued that the conflict needs to end because if it keeps running on and dragging on, it's actually beneficial to opponents of Russia.And he also said something particularly interesting, Francis.He said it was kind of difficult for many of Russia's allies.including Kazakhstan, to understand why on earth it was actually continuing for such a long period of time.

This is, shall we say, as you said, also basically kind of embarrassing for Russia.You know, they've got allies turning around and saying, Can you wind it up, please?We're starting to get a bit fed up with it.And I think if we want to sort of zoom out a bit and look at the diplomatic picture here, you know, you need your allies to be fundamentally on board with the long -term goals of your war, right, if you want to have continued support.Your allies can express reservations about certain, like, tactical decisions that you may or may not have decided to make.We obviously saw that a lot in Israel in terms of the West's views on what should or shouldn't happen within the framework of the war.

When you've got allies just kind of openly saying they don't really understand what the point of the war is anymore, you know, you're in a much stickier situation.

Absolutely.Well, particularly as well, I would say the sticky situation because of the gasoline export ban that's been in place for the last few weeks is set to extend until the end of 2026.Another remarkable story, which I'm sure James Kilner will be talking about in more detail later in the week.But one final story, James, from you before we bring in Carolina.And thank you very much for your patience.I'm looking forward to getting to you in a moment.

And this is, you mentioned the US position earlier on.What are we hearing at the moment from the Kremlin's response to some of these again, rumors of a revised truce plan of some kind.

Yes, the Kremlin is not keen, shall we say, on the persistent rumours of some kind of US -Ukraine air truce being introduced.The Kremlin, according to the Kyiv Post, has rejected reports of a possible US -Ukraine plan for a partial ceasefire on air attacks specifically, hence air truce.And it's kind of the usual message from Moscow, which is they've said that they need to have more formal talksbefore responding.This is a pretty sort of common Kremlin tactic where they will reject something out of hand, but then they will have a kind of bane in the antidote where they will also say, you know, once we've got more information, we can look at it more clearly.By the way, our colleague Roland Oliphant, who you know, spent so many years investigating.

MH17 used to talk about that tactic all the time in that context, a really damning story would come out, you know, on sort of Russia being responsible for it.And the Kremlin response would be that they completely and utterly reject the story, but let us look closer at what the findings are.At the same time, it's kind of opening the door to maybe them coming back with a slightly more detailed response later.Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, has said that they are newspaper reports and nothing more in the context of those hopes of an air ceasefire.And he said that Russia would like to see more details and if they get a concrete initiative put in front of them, then they might be more willing to consider it.But President Volodymyr Zelensky says that he's already submitted such proposals to Russia.

So there you go.

Let's bring in Velt's international security correspondent now, Carolina Druten.Thank you so much for your patience, Carolina.Now, you and James actually worked together on a story published in The Telegraph about, well, the sort of the new golden alliance between Germany and Britain in recent weeks, particularly around missiles.So where do you want to start in talking us through this story before we come to the big one, of course, which is the podcast?

Yeah, thanks for having me. I mean, we did the story together of like a new partnership between the UK and Germany when it comes to defence.I mean, that's the first time for decades, really, that in the view of the British government, that Germany is actually a partner in this in this field, right?Because for decades, it has been not a very strong partner, but afterthe Zeitenwende that the former German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called, of course, there's massive investment in defense and military capabilities here in Germany, all financed by debt.So there is almost unlimited financing for these kind of things.And I think that's, James, also where this interest in the DPS cooperation comes from, right?

Yeah, very much so.I mean, the message that we got certainly from the British side, Francis, is that there's a lot of excitement about the massive financial war chest that the Germans have created, especially not just necessarily for the DPS project, but for military spending in general.As Carolina said, the German government, which for so many decades was terrified of taking on excessive government debt, has now opened the door to unlimited defense spending.Some of the sources that we spoke to for this story as I said, more on the British side than the German side, were hopeful that a lot of the financing would be coming from the German side.And that kind of follows a bit of a trend in the United Kingdom, where the Germans have been opening lots of arms factories, basically, in the United Kingdom.Well, I say opening arms factories, opening them or expanding pre -existing facilities or acquiring UK businesses.

But the story itself was about DPS, which stands for Deep Precision Strikes.And it's basically, I think if I'm remembering correctly, it's a missile that can travel for 2 ,000 kilometers and therefore would give the UK, Germany and NATO allies extraordinary range if they were to need it in the event of a conflict with Russia.

I mean, that's the sort of capability that the Brits and the Germans want to develop together, right?I mean, DPS starts, I think, from a range of like 500 kilometers plus, but then it ranges like up to 2000 kilometers plus.And that's, of course, a crucial element.in a potential warfare against Russia.I mean, we can see it from the Ukraine war.Ukraine has been very successful in using these kind of capabilities that partly they have developed themselves in attacking Russia.

And all sources that we've been speaking to, I've been speaking to, agree that in a potential conflict with Russia, that would be one of the most effective ways of defending Europe in this kind of scenario, that there should be an attack from Russia in fighting back on Russian territory, which you need these weapons for.And which, of course, are now mostly provided by the Americans, which do not appear so keen in doing that in the future.

Well, thanks very much for talking us through that.I say we'll link to that piece in the show notes.Let's turn to our main topic now.

The Russians will not be deterred if we throw cotton wool at them.

Can anyone at this table assess what the Russians actually want?What is their objective?

To make the Baltics Russian.

I'd rather say to demonstrate NATO and the EU's inability to act.

And then to make the Baltics Russian.

Yes, that was James playing the role of the German Chancellor, or should I say dubbing the participant who played the role of the German Chancellor in Ernstfall, a five -part podcast hosted by Carolina simulating an attack on NATO's eastern flank.Politicians, former military officials and experts take on the roles of the German government for a day.A second team plays the Kremlin.It was a war game that triggered an international debate, so the podcast decided to publish the results in English as well.Hence James and my dubbing voices in it.Karolina, just remind us more about it.

Mark Ritter, NATO's Secretary General, commented on it publicly, which surprised me a lot, to be honest.So what did we want to do with this war game?I mean, we already talked about the new sort of like military funding that Germany is putting forward.And then in the words of FriedrichMerz, the current German Chancellor, Germany is set to build Europe's largest conventional army, right?At the same time, America is retracting slowly from its position in Europe's defense and Germany as the largest economy, said to have the largest conventional army, will have a big say in these sort of fields, right, in defending Europe.

So that's why we wanted to test if Germany actually has the strategic mindset, like the sort of leadership ambition that it has to fill these shoes, right, and we decided to run a war game, testing how the German government could react if there was a Russian attack on Lithuania in the Baltic states.And that's what we did, right?And I mean, the results were quite sobering.And yeah, I mean, it's mostly about testing Germany's decision -making processes, testing the strategic mindset or lack thereof that Germany has, and seeing where our weaknesses lie.I think that, like, we have to have this sort of strategic discussion in Germany, because we're not used to that, right?We're really not used to that.

Well, let's hear another clip now that illustrates the German team's reluctance to take the initiative and its desire to always act in accordance with its allies, especially the US.

Civilian shipping is now under the escort of the Russian Navy, including the Shadow Fleet.Definitely.Perhaps we should sink one of their ships.

Behind the Chancellor's pointed remark lies a tricky question.If Russia starts protecting its tankers with warships, how far is Germany actually prepared to go to enforce its own decisions?

The question that arises for me is, if we stick to this course of action, and in the future, Shadow Fleet vessels are escorted by the Russian Navy, are we prepared to stop these ships regardless?After all, that is the objective of our operation.I think so, yes.If we scale back our measures now, that would amount to backing down.Then we need to take a long, hard look at ourselves, because that obviously could mean using live fire.

The Chancellor is now wrestling with a decision the Blue Team thought it had already made.

If that is what the alliance decides, we are ready to have German ships in Fawcett.

But have we actually reached Article 5 yet?We have not.Exactly, Chancellor.I understood you to say that the Americans remain very hesitant.This debate reveals something more fundamental.

For decades, Germany was used to operating on the assumption that, in the end, the United States would underwrite the highest level of escalation.Now the blue team is weighing decisions that, in the worst case, could lead to a direct military confrontation, without clear backing from Washington.

So the German government was the blue team, but let's turn to the red team.I'd be interested in what were the, or what was the philosophy really of the red team in how they approached the response?How did you find people to cover that accurately?

Yeah, so that was actually the second objective that we had with this war game.One was to test Germany's decision making processes, but the other was also to shed a bit more light on how the Kremlin might think and what the Kremlin's strategic objectives are.when it comes to any sort of security architecture in Europe.Because when we talk about that in Germany, my impression is that sometimes people mislead the Kremlin's interest, right?It's like, oh, Russia doesn't have an interest in sustaining this war, right?We just have to talk to Russia, like maybe we can pick up an energy cooperation after the war ends, right?

And this is somethingthat... people and also politicians say.And like for me, that was important to like just showcase a little bit more what the Kremlin wants to achieve in Europe, which is like going back to a security architecture which predates 1997, right?And that's why we selected three participants or three players that played in the red team.The president was Aleksandr Gabouyev.He's a a native of Moscow, grew up there, started his career as a journalist, he was part of the Kremlin press corps, so he knows the way in which these people think, right, and how they take decisions.

And he's now the head of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, and he played the Russian president.We had Franz Stephan Gadi, an Austrian military expert, and we had Arndt Freytag from Loringhofen, who is a former German diplomat and NATO official.So they were playing the red team, and they had an attack plan against the blue team, against Germany.And What they were trying to achieve, interestingly, was not to capture massive bits of land in Europe, but more to show that nature is not capable of acting and that Europe is not capable of acting.And without American leadership, it will not be possible for European NATO allies to obstruct the Kremlin's objectives.And that's exactly what happened in the war game.

And there's also a diversion in the way of which the red team and the blue team were seeing the objectives of the war game.Because as I just said, the Kremlin's objective was to paralyze NATO and then the blue team didn't quite get that, right?I was like, shortly after we published the war game or the podcast on the war game in German, I was sitting on a panel with the Chancellor and the blue team.Solike the German Chancellor, and he was saying, and I was, I was surprised that he said that he said, after the war game, he thought that the blue team had won.And I was like, Oh, how did you come to that conclusion?

Right?Because to me, it was quite obvious that that wasn't the case.And he said, Well, I thought that the aim was to prevent a larger war in Europe.But that was never the aim, right?So I think that's very, It's a good example of how like sometimes in the German political culture, Russia might be misread sometimes.So I was hoping that the war game could help.

open eyes and that dimension as well.

Well, James, or should I say Herr Chancellor, because you were dubbing in the English version, the person who played the Chancellor for the blue team in the war game.This caused quite a stir in Germany at the time.I wonder if you could just comment on that.

Yes, it really did cause a stir.I mean, I think as Carolina has said, This podcast forced Germany to have some really quite difficult discussions about how it might respond in the events of NATO territory being attacked.I think it's fair to say for many decades that, you know, successive German leaders kind of paid lip service to the idea of being in NATO, but never really thought they might have to actually come to the defense of an ally.And I think, you know, what this podcast does so well is it really it gives you a really quite stark impression of just how reluctant, frankly, the German side specifically would be to kind of do a full -on military response to Article 5.I think we also, I'm not sure if we touched on this when we last discussed Ernst Fowle, but there's that whole sort of fascinating section involving the German brigade in Lithuania and it basically gets, I think Karolina alluded to this earlier, that it basically gets paralysed because the Russian side of the war game has like mined the area or they'remines that pre -exist.

The provocation aren't there, which means that the Germans don't want to maneuver out of the base.

Yeah, it wasn't in the military plan that the Red Team had prepared.I think what was the bigger problem was that there was no...Article 5 wasn't invoked, right?And for Germany...It's very important to follow a plan that has been agreed on before.So in an Article 5 situation, Germany knows what to do, the German Brigade knows what to do, the German Chancellery knows what to do.

But if that doesn't happen, if things look a bit more unclear, which is Russia's specialty, of course, then it gets a bit murkier.And because Article 5 wasn't invoked and Germany didn't want to act out of line and act on its own, a coalition of the willing.didn't appear strong enough to take that place of NATO and then the EU is not really capable of acting militarily like that was the actual problem, right?So if there is a situation where Germany has to take an actual leadership and cannot rely on the Americans or on a plan that had been set before, it's very difficult in the traditional strategic way of German thinking to act.This is one problem.Second problem, fear of escalation for sure.

also what the person Peter Tauber who played the German Chancellor was saying, like we thought that we won, it was really eye -opening to me because there's a fear of escalation, like Germany wants to contain any conflict, like misreading Russia's strategy, that for sure.So I think these are all learned learned realities in the German thinking that we have been learning over decades because we don't have the same level of strategic thinking that other countries such as the UK or the US have and that of course has historic reasons but it's notit it doesn't work in a situation like that like we need to relearn this kind of strategic thing or like relearn sounds wrong sounds wrong historically but we need to like learn a different way of strategic thinking um and yeah and then hopefully we can have another outcome in different war games in the future.

Well, Carolina, thank you so much for talking us through that.As I say, you host it and you hear James playing the person who played the chancellor.And in this final clip, which will play out the episode today, you can hear me dubbing the person who played the Russian president's foreign minister.But we'll have a link in the show notes to those of you who would like to listen to that series.We really, really recommend it.It's a fascinating one.

Thanks from us here in London and from Berlin.

The red team also learns of the measures taken by the Germans and remains unimpressed.

They expect nothing of what we will do.

Your respect for the Germans used to be greater, Mr. President.

Yes, back then.That's water under the bridge.

They're so small -minded.It's unbelievable.

The Russians have one major advantage here.They already know that they have decided to invade Lithuania.The blue team, by contrast, is reacting to what it can see.Hybrid attacks, troop movements, warnings coming out of Vilnius.From the Germans' perspective, the measures they are taking are necessary in an uncertain situation.From the Russian perspective, however, the German response looks hesitant and slow.

This is how the Russian foreign minister describes it.

It's often been the same in the past.Germany never expected what we were capable of doing offensively.They were always caught off guard.And to this day, they haven't learned anything.I mean, NATO is now effectively on the brink of a major war, and the German response ispetty, half -hearted.

It's unbelievable.