Gentle reminder that Putin publicly said that he would prefer Biden’s win 😉

Credible assessment of foreign policy needs from the excellent Chatham House team. Not considered relevant to voters by respective party election teams, but it really should be in these turbulent times. The decline of our Foreign Office heft has been sad to witness.

Michael in the thick of the election campaign 🤗

For all we moan about the ‘state’ of the NHS, the mental health part of the service has for many years been the poor relation. Good piece from Shaun Lintern shedding light on the more extreme consequences.

Best not to take your internet for granted!

Yes! Expanding the range of 'entry points' into military service, including more apprenticeship opportunities, would create more practicable and sustainable growth for the armed forces. Oh and scrap hopeless one-size-fits-all recruitment idea and insource to individual services.

Word of the day is ‘absquatulate’ (19th century): to leave in a hurry.

To paraphrase Hemingway, our cultural bankruptcy evolved in two ways: gradually and then suddenly. #Newsnight

Subjective I know but Victoria Derbyshire is the best the BBC has and a beacon of hope for a renaissance of its once-peerless reputation for broadcast journalism.

Show them the door. The only justification to leave them in NATO is the hope that he'll eventually be kicked out by the Hungarian people.

But don’t worry, folks. Austria is neutral, you know.

Surely it's surprising there's any doubt? Short of buying time to urgently realign Western strategy, it's hard to fathom the pretence that China's relationship with the West is now in any sense friendly.

Before beginning a process of reconstruction and repair, It’s necessary to understand the full extent of the damage done. You’ll struggle to find a more damning indictment of one of the central pillars of British interests than this.

Russia has decided to unilaterally move its border with Lithuania and Finland in the Baltic Sea. According to a document prepared by the Defense Ministry, Russia intends to declare part of the water area in the east of the Gulf of Finland, as well as near the cities of Baltiysk

Yes, Velina, both US and most Eirppean governments have still failed to grasp that China and Russia are now working together on a wide variety of disinformation and disruptive economic and political initiatives globally.

Quite…and with some success!

Further discussion about the paucity of our military capabilities, this one concerning the RAF’s diminished airlift capacity. The biggest concern though is the time lag involved in our tortuous procurement process, and unfit for purpose, outsourced recruitment process.

A lovely thread from Mark highlighting a great career within the context of conflict reporting from one of the best.